


Contact

by h0ldthiscat



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, revival era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 05:18:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7963942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/h0ldthiscat/pseuds/h0ldthiscat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unsure of the nature of their relationship, Mulder and Scully must work together when they receive an email from someone they thought was gone from their lives forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Why I Wrote "Contact"
> 
> The original one-chapter setup of this story was written over a year ago as a way for me to order and reconcile some of the spoilers we’d heard about the revival. We were crushed that Mulder and Scully wouldn’t be living together, we didn’t know who the hell Tad was, and we were told that William would be “addressed” in some way. Initially all I intended to do was to set up a little mini story where all of those things were still possible, but on my terms. “Separated but sleeping together occasionally” had become the norm in revival speculation fic, and mine was no exception. 
> 
> I got a lot of positive feedback from the one-shot (do people still say that?) version of “Contact”, and many people asked me if I would continue writing it. I didn’t have any plans to but was grateful that people saw a future for the fic. Several months later, still before the revival had aired, I was still writing short pieces, mostly based off prompts I was receiving on Tumblr. While I enjoyed flexing my writing muscles so frequently, I found myself beginning to produce things I didn’t really like. I was answering prompts and suggestions as quickly as I could and found myself more interested in the feedback I would receive than what I was actually writing. I read a lot of really excellent writing by a handful of authors from quick prompts and ask memes, and recognized that I also genuinely liked some of my own, but ultimately I decided that that format was not for me. I wanted to do the thing that had always scared me: write and finish a multi-chapter fic. 
> 
> I’ve been writing fanfiction in various fandoms for ten years and not once have I finished a WIP. Apologies to the Grey’s Anatomy fandom for that cruel cliffhanger, and to anyone looking for me to finish that fluffy Gone with the Wind thing I started--I just didn’t have it in me. So this time I wanted to prove to myself and to y’all, the readers, that I could finish what I started. I picked up the thread of the original one-shot “Contact”, drew up an outline, a chapter breakdown, and began. Slowly. And sometimes very quickly; all I would do on my day off was write, pages and pages. And then I’d get stuck for days, weeks. I started this in March and it’s now September. It took six months to make this, y’all, and I definitely didn’t do it alone. 
> 
> My sincerest thanks go out to anyone who reads my work, especially to the friends who continued to encourage me to write a long piece. A special thank you to Aloysia Virgata, without whom the word “pee” would appear far too many times in this story. 
> 
> Thanks, and happy reading.

It hurts very much at first, then a little, then not at all. 

That’s a lie, she tells herself one morning as she checks the OR board and tries to ignore the throbbing in her lower back. She could never not miss him. Her hands rub tiny circles above the backs of her hipbones, push up the bottom of her scrub top to press harder, to unconsciously trace the Ouroboros. She misses him dully, achingly, in the way that she misses her bed after back-to-back surgeries. 

He and her bed are not synonymous anymore. 

He is a sprawling sleeper anyway, she thinks, and throws her styrofoam coffee cup in the trashcan as she heads back to her office. 

X

She is happy. She could have gone to Hopkins or Franklin Square, but in the end she’d decided to stay in DC. Mom’s getting old, she’d told herself as she signed her letter of resignation at Our Lady and put her things in a box and started at GW the next day. 

She is happy. She likes her staff, her patients. She likes her office. They’d given her a large, brightly-lit corner office to call her own. He’d come to visit several times, proving that there was no place he didn’t mark with the memory and the smell of him, as equally inescapable and elusive as the truth he so desperately sought.

Seeks, she corrects herself. He is still looking for something. It’s she who is done.

She is happy. Mostly. 

X

She is lying on the couch in her office when her phone buzzes beside her head. The vibration rattles her skull, her eye sockets, her nasal cavity, and she thinks distantly of radiation, of the disease she survived, of the fear that sometimes still grips her alone in her bed. 

She answers. “Scully.”

“Hey.” It’s only 7am but he sounds alert. She doubts he’s slept. “Something came through to my encrypted email address last night.” 

“I didn’t know you still had it.”

“You know me, I have a hard time letting things go.”

She grimaces and props herself up on one elbow. “What was in the message?”

“I’ve got Keegan and Caroline working on it now. Whoever sent it ran it through one of those scramblers, a new one. I’m not as well-versed, but it’ll be done soon.”

“You keep those kids working round the clock.”

“Ain’t no rest for the wicked, Scully.”

She smiles at that. Almost.

“How are you?” he asks, his voice pitching low. She thinks she hears him walk into another room.

“Hungry. Tired.” She rises and fishes a granola bar out of the top drawer of her desk. “I was in surgery all night and I have another one this afternoon.”

“What time will you be done?” 

The smile tugs at the corner of her mouth again. “8, maybe.”

“Well it is Thursday…” he says, and she can see him pacing the floor of the living room, scratching the back of his head and slurping from a mug of coffee. 

“It is Thursday,” she agrees, feeling the color rise in her face. She remembers two Thursdays ago, bent over the vanity in the bathroom as Thursday turned into Friday, her day off. 

“Well if nothing comes up, let me know.”

“Okay,” she says, relishing their easy back and forth. Her voice is warm when she says, “Talk to you soon.”

She slides back down onto the couch, massaging her eyes with the heels of her palms. They haven’t found it necessary to define the time they’ve been spending together recently. For now she is comfortable with the way she sometimes spends the night, the way he sometimes texts her naughty things at work, the way she smiles more. 

Scully only realizes she’s fallen asleep when her phone buzzes against her leg. 

“Yeah?” she answers. She pulls her phone back and glances at the time--less than an hour has passed.

“It’s me. Um. We decoded the email.”

“And?”

“You’re gonna want to come take a look.”

“Mulder, I’m at work.”

“I don’t think this is something you should hear over the phone.”

X

The gravel crunches under her tires when she pulls up. Other than hers and Mulder’s there is only one other car in the driveway, a nondescript dark green sedan with an Apache flag bumper sticker in the center of the back window. As she parks, she sees a dark head of hair at the front door, backpack slung over her shoulder. 

“Hi Caroline,” Scully calls as she gets out of her car. 

The girl looks up, nods her head. Caroline has always had a peaceful sort of beauty, but today her normally calm face is clouded with confusion. 

Scully meets her on the porch. “He have you guys working all night?”

“It’s whatever.” Caroline shrugs one shoulder and puts her hair behind her ear. 

“It doesn’t look like whatever,” Scully says knowingly. 

“He’s in there,” Caroline says vaguely, and slinks down the stairs to her car. 

Scully’s heart thuds in her ears, but she gives a tiny rap on the door before pushing it all the way open. “It’s me,” she calls quietly. 

“Study,” he calls back from down the hall. 

She is struck with an uncomfortable sense of deja vu, the nights and mornings she came home, only to find him in the same spot she’d left him, his face sickly white from the glow of the computer screen. He’s been better lately. Taking on some assistants has really helped. But she seems to have inherited her mother’s propensity for worrying. 

“What’s this email all about?” she asks, standing in the doorway. 

His hair is ruffled and she has to resist the urge to lay a kiss on the top of his head. 

Mulder, a day or two’s worth of salt and pepper scruff at his jawline, hands her a printout, symbols and characters jumbled up on a page with no apparent form or structure. 

“The original message?” she asks. 

“And the translation,” he says, handing her another page. The decoded text is only a few paragraphs long and she begins reading aloud. 

“Dear Mr. Mulder, I have been reading your website for several months now--” She smiles and looks up. “Is this fanmail, Mulder?”

He does not laugh. “Scully.”

His seriousness makes her more nervous than before. She clears her throat and continues reading. “I have been reading your website for several months now and I think you can help me. You might be the only person who can, because it sounds like you have experienced some of the things that are happening to me. My name is W--”

Her mouth is dry suddenly, her lips move but no sound comes out. She looks at Mulder. He looks at the floor. 

“My name is Will Van de Kamp,” she continues. “For the past two years, some stuff has happened to me that I can't explain. I've always kind of wondered if I was different.”

She puts a hand over her mouth and sits in the armchair in the corner, reading the rest silently to herself. 

_I know I was adopted before I was a year old. For a while I thought my dreams were about that, but lately they seem more real and it's harder to wake up. Basically I’m standing in a field and a group of people start walking toward me. They look like people but then they get closer and I realize they're aliens. Tall and skinny with weird-shaped heads. They tell me it's time to come home and that I need to go with them._

_On your website you talk about your abduction sometimes, so my question is did this happen to you before you were abducted? Do you know any abductees who have experienced dreams like mine? Also have any of them seen things that no one else can see? Can you help me please?_

_Sincerely,  
Will_

_PS- I used a scrambler in case I am being monitored. If you’re able to decode this you’ll know how to email me back._

“Is it real?” Scully tries to steady her hand but the printout flaps querulously. 

“It appears to be,” he answers, still looking at the floor. 

“What do you mean _appears_? Is this sort of thing easy to fake?”

“Not from what the staff told me. This is one of the newer encryption programs.” She hears the pride in his voice, the unsaid pleasure he takes in the fact that their son is a computer geek. 

She manages a chuckle. “The staff? Can’t you call them something different?” 

“Interns is too degrading. Plus, I pay them.”

She looks back at the email, worries her thumb along her bottom lip. “Mulder, this is…”

“I know.” He leans back in his desk chair. There is a long silence. “I know.”

She almost hesitates to ask it, but knows she has to. “And you don't think he knows you're his--” 

Mulder shakes his head, averts his eyes. “There’s no paper trail. No record to connect me to him in any way.”

She has to remember, like always, that he lost a child too. She thinks distantly of cliches that don’t quite fit: how there’s no word for parents who lose a child, Hemingway’s six-word tragedy. What do you call a woman like her? _A monster_ , a wicked voice in the back of her head hisses, and she shivers.

“Mulder…” She says it slowly, wetting her lips to buy time. “If this is really him… is this even legal? When I gave--I told the adoption service that he wasn’t to have any contact. That I didn’t want that for him.”

“He has no idea he's making contact. He’s just a kid seeking my advice as an expert on unexplainable phenomena.”

She feels tears prick the back of her eyes. “Goddamn it.”

He scoots his feet along the carpet, rolling towards her in his office chair until he takes her hands in his. 

“What do we do now?” she asks, watching him trace unreadable symbols into her palm. 

“I sent the staff home,” says Mulder softly. 

She looks up to make sure she hasn’t misunderstood. “I should go.”

She doesn’t. 

X

She can’t be with him anymore, but being without him seems even more impossible. She thinks of all the codependent words she uses to describe their symbiosis to her therapist, and how none of them seem true when she’s with him. 

He rests his hand across her clavicle, stroking her throat with his thumb. “When you think about him, what does he look like?”

She almost laughs at the cruelty of his question. “Tall. Taller than me already.”

“That’s not too hard.”

She shoves him. “He does something active. Soccer, maybe. Something that involves a lot of running. His legs are long.”

“That he got from you.” He slides a hand down the front of her thigh and she can’t contain a shiver, even though she knows he’s mocking her. “They just let you leave the hospital?”

“No, they pushed my surgery. Having trouble getting the parents to consent.” She twists her torso to look over her shoulder at the clock. “I should get back though.”

He rolls away, lets her sit up and find her blouse. “You know what they say. Time and tide wait for no head of pediatric surgery.”

“I’m not familiar with that one.”

He smirks and she kisses him, leans over him with her blouse half-on and he pulls her down on top of him. When her phone buzzes loudly and skitters across the bedside table she lets out a frustrated groan. 

“Leave it.”

“I can’t.” She gasps as his hand roughly palms her breast and he places a playful bite at the juncture of her neck and shoulder. “It’s work. It’s--”

Her brow furrows when she sees the familiar but unexpected name on the screen. “I’m sorry, I have to--” She dismounts and accepts the call. “Dana Scully.”

“Dana, it’s Tad O’Malley.”

She’s already annoyed. “I know.”

“So you didn’t delete my number?”

She scoffs but can’t help a smile. He’d always been optimistically and presumptuously self-assured, not unlike someone else she knows.

“What do you want, Tad?”

_Tad?_ , Mulder mouths, and she swats him away. 

“Got a tip this morning, sounds like something that used to be up your alley.”

“I don’t like the way he’s talking about your alley,” Mulder grumbles against her shoulder.

Scully smacks his arm. “Jesus Christ.”

“What?” O’Malley’s voice says on the other end of the phone.

“Nothing. Used to be…” She pushes her hair out of her face, behind her ear. She feels a headache forming right behind her eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“Got a tip this morning from some kid out west. Claims his friend’s had contact with an alien race and thinks it’d make an interesting story.”

She bites her tongue to keep from screaming, counts to three. “It would, Tad. It would make a very interesting story, but that’s all it is. A story.” She throws Mulder a playful glance as she expounds. “Science fiction.”

“I don’t know, this one’s got a ring of truth to it.”

Scully lets out a frustrated puff of air, cradles the phone between her shoulder and ear as she buttons up her blouse. “I have to go.”

“Will you just look at the stuff this kid sent?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Dana, I know this used to be your whole life. Don’t pretend you’re not the slightest bit interested.”

She turns to look over her shoulder at Mulder, who’s feigning disinterest and has suddenly become fascinated by his bedroom ceiling. “Who else have you told?” she sighs. 

“No one, but we have to move fast. If NBC--”

Scully clears her throat. “Outside your office. Half an hour. Don’t be late, I have a surgery this afternoon.” The lie slips easily from her mouth.

“Thanks. Oh, and Dana?”

“What?” she snaps.

“Roll Mulder over and tell him to come along too.” The line goes dead.

She clicks her tongue in disgust. “Bastard.”

“I didn’t know you and Tad were still talking,” Mulder says casually. He’s picked up his own phone and is scrolling mindlessly through his Twitter feed. 

“We’re not,” she says adamantly, pulling on her underwear and then her skirt. “Come on.”

“The illustrious Tad O’Malley wants little old me to come along?” He scoops his t-shirt from the floor and pulls it over his head.

“You are neither little nor old and you know it. Apparently William’s--” She stops herself. It’s the first time she’s said his name in she doesn’t know how long. She’s never felt anything quite like it before. “One of his so-called friends called the goddamn media.”

“Well he’s clearly an excellent judge of character,” Mulder grumbles as he pulls his jeans back on and shuffles to the closet to look for a jacket. “He gets that from you, you know.”

It is the sort of thing he would have said in the old days, but suddenly nothing is funny anymore. She must be showing it on her face because he says quietly, “Sorry. That was uncalled for.”

She pulls on her suit jacket. “Let’s just get this over with, okay?”

In this moment, she is mostly unhappy.


	2. Chapter 2

The sun shines off the reflective office buildings around them, making her squint so much it hurts. She wishes she’d picked a different outfit, but her apartment is never warm enough in the mornings, so she always ends up overdressing. Mulder seems perfectly comfortable in his t-shirt and jacket. She’s annoyed she left her sunglasses in her car.

Scully twists her wrist to check her watch--two past. Why is she not surprised?

“Where’s the Fitbit I got you?” Mulder asks, hand gently finding her elbow. 

“It doesn’t go with this outfit.” She gestures down to her navy skirt and jacket. When he doesn’t seem to understand, she explains, “It’s black.”

“You always say black goes with everything.” 

“Not _navy_.”

“Dana. Mulder.” Tad’s voice makes her look up, and for the first time since they ended things she is overwhelmed with gratitude to see him. Their time together had been nice but brief, once they’d realized the only things they had in common were their busy schedules and love of iced coffee. _“Who doesn’t love iced coffee?” Mulder had teased against her neck the first night she’d shown up on his porch._

“Tad, thanks for the call.” She extends a hand and he shakes it, then Mulder’s. 

“I don’t have a ton of contacts in this field, besides you two. I thought you’d be able to take a look, figure out if this kid is legit.”

“How did you receive the info? Encrypted or no?” Mulder asks. 

Tad runs a hand across his jaw. “Email attachments. Records of his conversations with this kid Van Kamp--” Scully resists the urge to correct him and feels Mulder tense beside her. “Screenshots, emails, and a written account of the things that Will Van Kamp has told him over the last six months.”

“Does he mention abductions? Missing time? Dreams or visions of some sort?” Mulder asks.

“Mulder…” Scully warns. To most people it would sound like a run of the mill inquiry, but she’s afraid his eagerness will show their hand.

Tad’s not stupid. “Is there something at play here I should know about?”

“I could ask you the same question,” Mulder says. 

Tad extends one of his spindly legs and grinds his heel into the pavement. “If you’re suggesting that I plan to exploit this kid you’re sorely mistaken. Truth Squad is all about giving the power back to the people.”

“And you’re the first person on that list,” Mulder says snidely.

“Well you’d know a little about self-serving, wouldn’t you Mulder?”

Scully squares her shoulders, unexpectedly ticked off. “What are you implying?”

“Come on, Dana,” Tad scoffs. “Mulder, those real _accounts_ on your blog-- they read like bad fiction and the main character-- _you_ \--has a martyr complex. The only person benefitting from your piddly-ass website is you and your ego.” 

“Well you seem to need me and my ego right now, so I’d go easy on the compliments, bucko.” Mulder crosses his arms over his chest, a stance Scully has seen him take with local law enforcement on many past occasions. “Despite your clearly biased opinions on my work, I run the preeminent site on extraterrestrial activities in North America, not to mention I have nearly twenty years with the Bureau investigating such findings, work that put Scully and myself at great risk on numerous occasions.”

“Technically, he was dead,” Scully chimes in against her better judgment. 

“For twenty-seven weeks,” Mulder says, hands on his hips. “Top that.”

“Please don’t,” Scully sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. 

Tad purses his lips and re-buttons his jacket with the casual confidence of someone who is used to being listened to. Scully laments the fact that Mulder has never been granted the same luxury. 

“Well, take a look at the stuff this kid sent and tell me if you think we should move forward with the interview.” 

Scully’s stomach lurches. “Interview?”

“Well yeah, if Van Kamp's legit we want to put him on air, get the story from the source.” 

Mulder cuts in, seemingly able to sense her inability to speak. “And expose him to--to ridicule, endangerment, unnecessary attention from every fear-monger in the country? What happened to giving the power back to the people, to not exploiting the poor kid?” 

“Mulder, I think you know better than anyone that if his claims are legitimized, it will validate the work you and Dana did for years, work that you still devote your life to.”

“Not without the proper platform. People hear UFOs on mainstream news--”

“Truth Squad is not mainstream news.”

“--and they lose their minds.”

“How is this any different from what you do every day?” Tad challenges.

Scully jumps in. “Mulder’s website is a resource for information-- precautionary measures and highly-researched data. Not some clickbait pseudojournalism. They wait weeks to launch a story because they want to make sure their readers have all the available information.”

“Without proper research this thing falls apart,” Mulder adds. “You’ve got a shoddy story and some screenshots to stand on. You know how easy that stuff is to fake?”

Tad is quiet for a second longer than Scully knows he’d like to be, long enough to tell her that he hasn’t thought this through, but that he’s about to come up with a solution she’s not going to like.

“So do the research,” Tad says. His unreadable gray eyes spark with the promise of a challenge. 

“I don’t work for you,” Mulder snaps. 

“Do the research,” Tad repeats. “Go to this kid, Van Kamp. Find out if what his friend says is true. If it is, convince him to do the interview. I’ll even offer exclusive web content on your blog, Mulder, behind the story, if you will. I’ll plug it on the show. Great publicity.”

“I don’t need your publicity, and neither does this kid. What he needs is to be protected.”

The wicked voice in Scully’s mind says, _you should have protected him, and you failed._ Her headache is throbbing now with laser-sharp focus in the spot where her tumor used to be. 

“Either you reach out and find out what’s up, or I do,” Tad says, with the weight of an ultimatum. “If there’s something boiling here, people need to know.”

“People need to be _informed_ and _educated_ if there’s even anything going on at all--”

“We’ll do it,” Scully hears herself say suddenly. “We’ll talk to him.”

“Scully…” Mulder takes her elbow again. “You don’t have to--”

“It’s our responsibility, Mulder,” Scully says quietly. “If there’s something wrong we need to help him. And if there’s not, we need to protect him from people just trying to break a story.” The more she talks the better the idea sounds.

“How long do you need?” Tad asks, nonplussed. “I don’t want the informant to walk.”

“Seventy-two hours,” she says, and it’s almost like she’s outside her own body. “You have to promise you won’t breathe a word of this until then.”

“You have to promise I won’t read about any of this on your website until then,” Tad says to Mulder. 

“Oh, you have my word on that,” Mulder says mockingly. 

Scully taps around on her phone and pulls up Mulder’s encrypted email, then shows the screen to Tad. “Forward the message to this email address, please.”

Tad whips out his own phone, passing a glance between them. “You two are something else, you know that?”

“So we’ve been told,” Mulder drawls. His phone buzzes in his pocket and he checks the message to make sure all the info is attached. “How do we know we’re the only ones you’ve told about this?”

Tad chuckles and stuffs his hands in his pockets. “Come on, Mulder. You were FBI for long enough to know better than to ask questions like that. What’s that saying?”

“Thou shalt not act like a pretentious tool?”

“Mulder.” Scully bites her tongue to keep from laughing.

“Keep your friends close, and your… well.” He laughs again and gives a small wave, turning around to go back inside.

“Which are we?” Mulder calls after him. 

“I think you already know the answer to that,” Tad replies, disappearing back into the building.

X

“Dumb little shithead didn’t even use an encryption program…” Keegan Parry mutters, opening the email. 

Scully leans over the desk chair. “So what does that mean? This info is just floating around in cyberspace?”

Keegan looks up at Scully almost pitifully. “I know you’re crazy smart and you have like, five degrees, but please don’t say cyberspace.”

“Come on, man,” Mulder says, hitting his employee on the shoulder. 

Keegan’s apartment in Columbia Heights is closer to the WNN building than either Scully’s apartment or Mulder’s house, and he knew they needed to go through the contents of Tad’s email somewhere secure and private. The technician had answered the phone through a mouthful of what Scully now surmises must have been the half-eaten bag of Bugles on his desk and said he didn’t mind them coming by. 

“The email server is secure, sure,” Keegan explains. “But anybody who knows anything about computers could get in in a minute. The message was sent early this morning, less than twelve hours ago. So if your guy O’Malley is telling the truth and you’re the only one’s he’s sent it to, the trail stops with him. Mulder’s encrypted address is designed to not leave a trail. If anyone were to get a hold of the email, they’d see O’Malley forwarded it but they wouldn’t be able to see to who.”

“Whom,” Mulder corrects.

“Whatever, man.” Keegan slurps at an energy drink that smells like bubble gum. 

Scully chuckles. She’s glad Mulder has someone like him. It’s been too long since they’ve huddled together over some hacker’s shoulders, analyzing data and mapping coordinates. She’s forgotten how much she enjoyed this part of what they used to do. 

“Print us out two copies of everything,” Mulder instructs. Keegan taps a couple keys and the printer on the other side of the room jolts to life. 

“This is the same kid who sent you that email this morning?” Keegan asks, feigning disinterest. 

“No, it's become significantly more complicated since then,” Mulder says distantly. Scully feels him over her shoulder at the printer. “How's it looking?” he asks.

“There's pages and pages of conversations here, Mulder.”

“All with William?”

Her throat is dry. It's strange hearing him say their son’s name. She can count the times he’s done it on one hand. “Yeah. It's the same kind of stuff in the message to you.” 

Mulder takes a few of the printouts, pinching his bottom lip between his fingers as he reads and paces. 

“He's really always been like this?” Keegan asks. 

It takes Scully a moment to realize he's talking to her. “Always,” she says with a soft smile. 

Keegan swivels in his desk chair and leans in conspiratorially. “So, like, what’s the deal with you two? Are you back together or--”

“Scully, come take a look at this.”

She hurries to the other side of the room and peers at the paper in Mulder’s hand. “What is it?”

“It’s a message describing one of his dreams in detail. Sound familiar?”

Scully scans the text, her stomach in knots. “A man with changing faces… green blood…” She meets Mulder’s eyes over the page. “This is almost too textbook to be true. Mulder, this is practically a cliche.” 

“Read this one,” he says, and hands her another sheet, a series of short text messages punctuated by emojis. 

_You ever get a weird feeling from Mr. Harold at the convenience store?_

_What do u mean?_

_He seems like, not human_

_How can u tell?_

_How can you not?_

“Inconclusive,” Scully sums up, though she feels herself starting to sweat. “Don’t you think you’re reading what you want to read?”

“You think I want to read this?” Mulder’s voice is pitched low, his eyes dark. 

“At this point I think the most we have to go on is the email he sent to you.” She doesn’t know when she started whispering. “If nothing else, it’s indicative of a boy in trouble and isn’t it our--”

She stops herself. It’s not her job anymore. It hasn’t been for quite some time, and it’s not his either. She gave up that job a long time ago. _You wasted your chance_ , says the wicked voice. As if he can hear it, Mulder cups her face with his hand, stroking a thumb across her temple. 

“It is our job,” he says quietly. “But we’re gonna need some help.”

X

Scully had always thought that with her and Mulder out of the way, Skinner would rise quickly in the ranks of the FBI, surely becoming Director if nothing else. It’s a little unsettling to be visiting him in the same office years later. Even though the visit is friendly, she can’t help but feel like a child in the principal’s office. Force of habit, she supposes. 

It’s been awhile since they’ve seen Skinner, for business or pleasure, and he pulls her into a stiff hug when they walk in the door. He gives Mulder a gruff handshake and an emotional pat on the back. 

“We’re not asking for support,” Mulder explains an hour later, the messages and emails fanned out across Skinner’s desk. “This is not a Bureau matter, it’s a very personal one. We just need… accreditation. Something that will make his parents--” He winces at the words but they’re already out of his mouth. “--make them believe it’s safe for him to come with us, if it comes to that.”

“And will it?”

“That’s what we hope to determine from a preliminary interview,” Scully says. “If we assess that he truly is in danger, he’ll be more protected under our resources. A temporary relocation until…”

“Until the world is safe again,” Mulder says distantly, and Scully can tell from his tone how stupid he knows that sounds. 

“He’ll stay with you?” Skinner asks Scully. 

“We don’t--ah. We haven’t--”

“He’ll stay with us,” Mulder says, taking Scully’s hand. She forces a smile out of shock. “We just need the badges. Forge them if you have to. But we’re going to keep this kid safe.”

“There’s about a thousand reasons I can think of why I shouldn’t do this.” Skinner scratches at the short beard coming in across his cheek. “And one very good reason I should.”

Scully remembers what an asset Skinner was when William was first born, how understanding he’d been during Mulder’s time in hiding, how supportive he’d been when she’d come back from Wyoming. Surely he understands what this means to her, to them, to them all. 

Skinner sighs, fiddling with a pen on his desk. “I’ll get something sorted out by morning. We’ll send the badges to you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Scully says, then chuckles when he furrows his brow. “Sorry, force of habit. Thank you, Walter. For… thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”


	3. Chapter 3

He’s been to her apartment exactly twice before this. Once, to drop off a bag of things she’d forgotten, and then about six months ago when she’d been sick with the flu. She’d called him in the afternoon, her voice scratchy from bile, and he’d brought over all the soup in his cabinets, suddenly unable to remember her favorite kind. She'd managed a smile and he’d propped her up on the couch and they sat there like nothing had changed. He read National Geographic and she skimmed through the New England Journal of Medicine until she was unable to stay awake, and then he'd carried her back to her bed and held onto the _thank you_ she whispered against his cheek. 

On this, his third visit, she says, “You can put your bag in there,” gesturing down the hall to the only bedroom, and then she slips into the bathroom and turns on the shower. 

In the last 24 hours they’d pored over everything in William’s email, and everything his friend Caleb had sent to Tad. After some string-pulling, Skinner had cleared them for temporary reinstatement less than 24 hours after their visit. 

When Scully had gone to go get the car, Skinner asked gruffly, “What happened between you two?”

Mulder had been caught off guard. “Uh--what?”

“The two of you were the biggest pain in my ass for years, but you were always less of a pain together. Whatever happened, fix it. That's an order.”

Their next order of business had been reaching back out to William. Caroline and Keegan had helped encrypt their response, and he’d replied almost immediately with the location to meet him; a quick Google search revealed it was a gas station across the street from a high school. There was something very tender about it that Mulder hadn't been quite able to articulate. 

Mulder deposits his small bag at the foot of her bed, white and laden with pillows. She always comes to his place. That’s how it’s been, from the beginning. Only the house had been equally both of theirs, and now it mostly feels like an office. He sleeps on the couch most nights. Old habits. 

He passes by the bathroom on his way to the kitchen and catches a whiff of her shampoo. It makes him pause and glance through the door she’s left ajar. He can see her body silhouetted against the thin shower curtain. Does she want company? Surely she would have said. He used to be able to read her like a book. Now she’s written in a dead language he has no hope of translating, even with Caroline’s help. 

In the kitchen, he takes out two plates and divvies up the sesame chicken and white rice between them, making sure to give Scully the lion’s share of broccolini. For a moment it is almost like old times, an arm’s length of companionable desperation between them and Chinese takeout on their plates. Most Eastern religions operate under the assumption that time is cyclical, not linear. He knows that for many years, Scully wore a cross around her neck but kept a mala in the drawer of her bedside table. He wonders if she still does. The bathroom door opens and she emerges with a towel wrapped around her head and another tucked under her armpits. 

“There’s wine in that cabinet,” she says, pointing. She rubs some lotion between her hands and spreads it up one bicep, starting at the elbow. 

“With Chinese food?” 

She shrugs and turns down the hall into the bedroom. Mulder goes to the cabinet and opens the bottle of red, pouring two glasses. In the hallway, he makes sure to shuffle his feet against the hardwood to signal his approach, and then he toes open the bedroom door. 

She stands naked at her dresser, fiddling with something in the top drawer. Her hair is still up in its towel, a few unruly pieces escaping at the nape of her neck. 

“Room service,” he announces quietly, passing her a glass. 

She hums a thank you and takes a few sips with her eyes closed. She doesn't seem skittish, so he inches closer, pressing against her side and playing his fingers at her hip. 

“We don't have to go if you don't want to,” he says against her shoulder, breathing in the dewy scent of her skin and her lotion. 

“No, I want to,” she says with a sigh. She shakes her head and lets the towel fall to the floor. “I want to and I don't want to.”

He looks down into the drawer and sees what she'd been looking at when he came in: a baby’s knitted cap. 

She studies it with intense focus, as if it’s under a microscope. He turns her head and tilts her chin up so her eyes meet his. They are unbelievably blue, but he has always found it easy to believe things most people cannot. She stands on her tiptoes and kisses him, her hand rising to grip his hair. His hands fall to the curve of her waist, centering them both. They leave their wine glasses on the dresser and she pulls him towards the bed, her breath hot on his mouth.

X

She looks back at him over her shoulder with her heavy-lidded eyes and says hoarsely, “What if we’re too late?” 

He reaches down and pulls her back flush against his chest, slowing his movements. “We won’t be,” he says through her hair, over her shoulder, into her ear. 

She grapples for purchase, fingers brushing his thigh, her own. He slides his hand up between her breasts and stops at her throat, closing his grip ever so slightly. She groans and urges, “Tighter.” 

X

After, when he stumbles out into the kitchen to pour them water, he sees the long-forgotten Chinese food congealing on the plates, sesame chicken glowing radioactive orange under the track lighting in her cabinets. He thinks of yellowcake uranium, then of a child’s birthday cake that will never be made, designed to look like the New Mexico desert, and he cries a little before he goes back to the bedroom. 

X

His badge sits heavy like a secret in his jacket pocket, pressing against his hip in the cramped airplane seat. He’d traded with Scully so she could have the aisle and for the first time he can remember she is actually sleeping on a plane. Her head balances precariously on her hand, elbow propped on the armrest. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re about thirty minutes out and beginning our descent into Casper, Wyoming, where the temperature outside is 42 degrees fahrenheit. Please note that the pilot has turned on the fasten seatbelt sign. This means that you need to remain in your seat until we land in Casper, with your tray table up and your seat in its fully upright position. Crew, please prepare the cabin for landing.”

Mulder has always balked at the fact that there is someone on every airplane who hasn't heard that speech yet, someone on their very first flight. Maybe the twitchy twenty-something on his left, who hasn't stopped jiggling his leg since they took off. 

Scully stirs with a groan and Mulder wants to curse the pilot. The plane lurches a little and her head bumps into his shoulder. 

“Did they say thirty minutes?” she asks, digging around in her purse for an Altoid. “Do you have the address?”

He wiggles his phone, different from the one he uses day-to-day. He remembers the days when he barely needed one cell phone, and now for some reason he needs two. Scully has two as well, tucked neatly into separate pockets sewn in the lining of her purse. Mulder never ceases to be amazed by the banalities of womanhood, like inner purse pockets and eyelash curlers. He'd watched Scully get ready this morning, rub two or three different oils through her hair, smear several different creams across her face, part her lips slightly when she applied mascara. He has missed her. 

X

The meeting place is still a two-hour drive from the airport, and they make it in near silence, the thready voice of the GPS app vibrating off the closed windows. It is April but the ground is still littered with patches of snow and they can see their breath for the first few miles as the car warms up. 

“Turn left, then turn left,” the GPS instructs, followed by what is likely a mispronunciation of a street name. 

“Do you think he’ll know who we are?” Mulder asks, peeling his eyes away from the winding road to glance at her elegant profile. 

“How many suits do you think will be descending upon a small town gas station at 10am?” 

“No, I meant--” He doesn't finish the thought, hoping she won't make him say it. 

“Oh.” 

He shifts in the too-small seat, jerking the gas pedal just a little bit. 

“In 500 feet, turn right to stay on Glenwood Avenue,” says the GPS. 

“No, I don't think he’ll know,” Scully says finally, after they have turned right to stay on Glenwood Avenue. “I didn't leave any pictures with them, I asked them not to tell him who I was.” 

The slate gray Wyoming sky rumbles with the impending threat of thunder. Bison dot the landscape against dry, prickly grass, and the mountains rise beside them on their left. How much time have they spent in beautiful places like this, not talking about things, Mulder wonders.

He takes the next turn, and they come to a four-way intersection with no traffic signal, but a flashing red light strung up at the top. Down the road, stacks of bleachers rise up from the flat horizon. Small clumps of teenagers follow along the sidewalks, on foot or on skateboards, cereal bars and Gatorades in their hands. He drives through the intersection, pretending not to hope he’ll see William, be able to pick him out of a crowd with some instinct he’s always hoped he has. 

“Mulder.” Suddenly, Scully grabs his arm, clutching him so tightly just below the elbow he’s afraid she’ll cut off blood flow. 

He follows her eyeline to a young boy crossing the street up ahead with some sort of instrument slung across his back. A guitar, maybe? It’s hard to tell. His hair is Scully’s flame-colored red, but his gait is distinctly Mulderish, with legs too long for his growing body and adolescent feet clunky in his Converse All-Stars. Mulder’s not sure why he’s so certain. He hears the part of his brain that Scully has inhabited saying, _it’s just the power of suggestion, Mulder. The mind sees what it wants to see._

Between them, the GPS speaks, startling him. “You have arrived at your destination.”

X

By the time they park at the gas station, it’s spitting. Mulder looks around the backseat futilely for an umbrella. He tries to catch Scully’s eye as they walk inside but her focus is laser-sharp, staring straight ahead. 

A friendly twenty-something behind the counter greets them with a wave as they walk in the door. Scully’s eyes dart around the convenience store, searching for a head of hair the color of her own. Mulder spots him in the back, by the soda coolers that line the walls. Over an endcap of Twinkies, he locks eyes with the boy, crystal blue like Scully’s. William gives a quick glance toward the back door and heads in that direction. 

“Come on,” Mulder says quietly, taking Scully by the elbow. 

With a quick glance back she understands what’s going on. “Smart kid.”

“Takes after his mom.”

The building shares a lot with a driving school, separated by a narrow pathway. They turn down the alley and are immediately met with the stench of dumpsters that haven’t been emptied today. Scully wrinkles her nose and steps a booted foot over a puddle of rainwater. 

Just before the first green dumpster, the back door of the gas station opens and William hops out, instrument still strapped to his back. Mulder smiles grimly at the thought of his son carrying a bazooka or grenade launcher around, concealed in a guitar case. 

“I didn’t want any eavesdroppers,” he says, and Mulder hears his son’s voice for the first time. It hasn’t quite dropped yet, but there’s a strength to it, a nasal resonance not unlike his mother’s. 

“Of course,” Scully says from beside him, her voice tight. 

“You’re Fox Mulder,” William says. It is half-verification, half-admiration. 

Out of habit, Mulder reaches into his pocket for his badge and holds it out. “The one and only.” William takes it, studying it quietly. “That’s true, by the way, according to the most recent available census data. There’s only one Fox Mulder in the world.” _There’s more than one William Scully_ , Mulder thinks with a stab of something like anguish. William hands back his badge and he gestures beside him. “And this is--”

“Dana Scully,” William finishes. “You guys are still working together, that’s awesome.”

Mulder watches as Scully shows her badge and manages a small smile. He can tell she is trying very hard not to cry. 

“How’d you get the badges?” William asks. “Your pictures are current.”

“Temporary reinstatement.” Scully returns her badge to her coat pocket and draws her collar up about her neck. The rain collects in droplets on her hair, making her look like some dewy fairy queen. 

“You said in your email you’ve been reading my website?” Mulder asks. 

“For a long time, since I was like, eleven,” William answers with an enthusiastic nod. “At first it was just for fun. I always thought that stuff was cool, you know, like Ghost Hunters and Myth Busters.”

“Those guys are jerks,” Mulder says, unable to keep from grinning. 

“And then I started having the dreams.”

“About six months ago?” Scully asks.

“Yeah, I think. Maybe I’ve had them earlier, I don’t really remember. They seem familiar, like I’ve had them before. But now they happen almost every night.”

“William, can you describe your dreams in exact detail for us?” Mulder asks. “And is it okay if we record it? I’d like to be able to compare your story to others I’ve heard before.”

“I guess so.” William shrugs, the instrument on his back raising and lowering with the movement. 

Mulder takes out his cell phone and opens his secure recording app. It’s synced with his office computer, so Caroline and Keegan should be able to receive the file and run it against other accounts they’ve collected in the past. 

“Whenever you’re ready.”

“They usually start and I’m walking down the road somewhere at night. In the dream I know it’s a road near my house but it doesn’t look like my house. Sometimes I’m on the beach.”

“Is it a beach you’ve been to before?” Scully asks. 

Africa, Mulder thinks. 

“I don’t know, they kind of all look the same. It’s nighttime. I can’t really tell. So I’m walking along and I feel something in front of me. I can’t see it yet but I know it’s there. And then they kind of come out of nowhere. This group of… at first they look like people. Men, women.”

“Any kids?” Mulder asks.

“Maybe. No one younger than me. But maybe some other teenagers. Mostly adults.”

“This is good, keep going,” Scully encourages. 

“They’re not violent but I feel threatened. Like I know they’re bad and I shouldn’t trust them.”

“How do you know?”

He shrugs again. “I just have a feeling. They tell me to come with them, that I belong with them. That it’s time to come home.”

“How do they tell you?” Mulder asks. “Do they speak? Do they speak English?”

Their son shakes his head. Mulder notices, for the first time, the freckles that span the bridge of his nose. “Their mouths don’t move. But I hear their voices in my head. And… I understand them but it’s not English.”

“Do you speak any other languages, William?” Scully asks gently. 

“ _Me llamo Guillermo_ ,” he says, and cracks a smile. 

Mulder laughs out loud. “Do you recognize the language they’re speaking to you in your dream?” he asks, still grinning. 

“It’s definitely not Spanish, if that’s what you’re asking,” William says. “I’ve never heard it before.”

“Can you remember any of it? Any words or phrases?”

He shakes his head, lips puckered slightly in an expression Mulder’s sure he’s seen on his own face on the other side of toothpaste-flecked mirror. “I can try to remember tonight, or tomorrow. Whenever I have the dream next.”

“Don’t force it,” Mulder recommends. He wets his lips, heart racing with the familiar rush of investigative intrigue. “What happens next?”

“They… change. From things that look like people into… whatever they are really, I guess. Aliens.”

“What do they look like?” Scully asks, her cheeks and the tip of her nose a blotchy pink in the windy alley. Mulder resists the need to put his arm around her shoulders. 

“Tall and thin,” William answers. “Their heads are… shaped weird, like alien heads, you know? Their skin is gray. Sick-looking.” He jumps suddenly, then pulls his vibrating phone out of his pocket. “Study hall’s over,” he says. “I have to get back to class.”

Mulder turns of the recorder and returns the phone to his pocket. “We’d like to meet with you again tomorrow, if that’s possible. To learn more about your dream and some of the other experiences you mentioned in your email.”

“Um, I might be able to meet tomorrow after school,” William says, nodding. “I have to work on a project but I’m free after that.”

“Send us an email and let us know.”

“I will.” He pulls at the strap on his instrument. “Thanks, um, for listening to me. No one’s ever done that before.”

Mulder thinks his heart breaks and jumps for joy all at the same time. Will gives a small wave and heads down the alley the way they came, hair flopping in the wind. After he turns the corner, Scully reaches for Mulder’s hand and holds it tightly. He does pull her towards him now, and when he rests his cheek on top of her head he feels the sharp prickle of cold raindrops in the crease of his eye, at the corner of his mouth.


	4. Chapter 4

“...and run it against the account we took from that woman in Manassas last fall,” Mulder instructs Caroline over Skype. 

“Sophia McIntyre,” Caroline says with a nod, and he hears the sound of a keyboard clicking.

“Check for similarities, and then shoot her an email asking how she’s doing. I think we should put out a piece at the end of this week on abductees a year post-return.”

“Who else do you wanna feature? Mathews and--”

“Rayburn, yeah.”

“On it,” she says, tucking a dark piece of hair behind her ear. 

“You might want to brush up on your extraterrestrial dialects as well,” Mulder tells her. “Hopefully I’ll have something for you to translate tomorrow.”

The archeolinguist raises an eyebrow, her interest piqued. “Sounds like the investigation’s going well. You and Dana meeting with him again tomorrow?”

“That’s the plan.”

Caroline’s eyes flick around the screen and then she drops her voice. “I don’t want to pry but, um. If you guys need anything.”

Mulder smiles. He knows Caroline hasn’t been back to the reservation since high school, that he and Keegan and their community of truth-seekers have become her support system. And of course Scully had been delighted to meet an archeolinguist, mainly because Caroline was one of few people with a more obscure field of knowledge than she herself. 

“I’ll let you know,” Mulder tells her. “Thanks.”

“What’s the hotel sitch out there, are you guys in the same room?” she asks, her eyes glinting in a rare moment of childlike wonder. 

“Did Keegan put you up to this?” he sighs. 

“No, dude,” Keegan’s voice comes from the background, and then he scoots into frame in a rolling desk chair. “We both just really wanna know.”

“Well it’s none of your damn business, goodnight,” Mulder says. There’s a rap on the hotel room door. “She comes bearing dinner. Gotta go.” Keegan whoops and Mulder flips him off. “Let me know if you find anything in that McIntyre testimony, Caroline. I’ll call you guys tomorrow.”

“10-4, boss.”

Mulder ends the call and Scully keys herself into the hotel room, struggling to balance the takeout boxes on her arm like a waitress. “I knocked,” she huffs.

“Finishing up on Skype,” Mulder explains, freeing her hands. 

Before leaving she’d changed into slacks and a scoop-collared shirt that’s got him wanting to bury his face in the silky crook of her neck and whisper a decade’s worth of apologies. A lifetime’s. Instead, he sets the boxes on the small table in the corner and watches as she shucks her coat off and drapes it over the bed. 

He’s booked a non-smoking room but the scent of nicotine clings to the carpet and the walls and reminds him of months, years, of living this way. Back then all he wanted was to be with Scully. That hasn’t changed, he supposes. He’d just forgotten it somewhere along the way. 

“Caroline and Keegan holding down the fort okay?” she asks, sitting down across from him. She is small enough that she can sit cross-legged in the stiff-armed chair. 

“I’ll be lucky if they don’t burn it down,” he jokes.

They settle into a comfortable silence, the TV humming low in the background. 

“What are you thinking?” he asks. 

She pokes at her taco salad. “We used to be able to communicate telepathically,” she says, a cryptic smile pulling the corners of her mouth. 

“Have you ever done that?” Mulder asks. 

“Telepathy?”

“William mentioned it, and I wondered--”

“If anything like that has happened to me.” She shakes her head. “No, nothing like that.”

They don’t talk about her abduction, he realizes slowly. They discuss the moment in time, the days surrounding it, the effects it’s had on both their lives, but rarely have they sat down and talked about the event itself. He’d been so relieved to get her back and she’d been so eager to forget the whole thing that other than when a case required some recollection of the actual events, they merely accepted it as another given circumstance in their lives, like their dead sisters or fathers they’d always disappointed. Missing time and barren wombs don’t exact make for good pillow talk, he supposes. And yet here they are, trying to figure out what is happening to their son. 

They move to the bed when they finish eating, turn up the TV and pretend to be normal for a little while, her head resting on his chest as they lay side by side. He wonders if she calculates his BPM when they lie like this. Quietly, she works her hand up under his t-shirt and a knot of desire forms behind his bellybutton. She kisses him slowly, like they have a lot of time. In the grand scheme of things, he supposes they do. 

X

Scully opens the blinds on her way to bathroom and he winces at the sharp stabs of sunlight that spill across the bed. Mulder stays there a few moments more, still able to smell her on the pillow beside him. He hears her turn on the shower and the bathroom fan drones to life. He rises, stretching, sore in places he never used to be, and picks at a few soggy fries left out on the table. 

He turns on the TV and flicks through the channels: home renovation show, Western, cartoons, cartoons, home renovation show, sports highlights, nature program, news, news, news, news-- Mulder pauses on a local news station, unsure why at first. The aerial shot of the building looks familiar. A headline at the bottom of the screen declares, _Just Now: Shepard High School Student Held Hostage by Convenience Store Owner._

“Scully!” he shouts, his voice breaking. 

“What?” She’s slightly annoyed. 

“We have to go now. Now.” He stumbles to his suitcase for a pair of pants, a clean shirt. Hell, it doesn’t even have to be clean, they just have to leave, now, have to get to their son before it’s too late, where the hell is his sock--

Scully emerges from the bathroom wrapped in a towel, water running down her shoulders. “Mulder, what’s--” Her eyes flick to the television, then to Mulder. “Give me five minutes.”

X

It has been a long time since they’ve leapt out of a car flashing badges and brandishing weapons, shouting, “FBI! FBI, step aside!” He takes the briefest of moments to clock how incredible it feels to be saving the world with Scully again before the scream of sirens and the whir of helicopter blades bring him back to the reality of the situation. 

They are met at the door by a tall woman with dark hair pulled back beneath her sheriff’s hat. “Excuse me, who are you?” Her voice is low and maddeningly calm. 

Mulder is struck with the uncharacteristic urge to shake her and her deputy pacing the sidewalk. Aren’t they doing anything? Why isn’t anyone inside? Have they had contact with William? 

“Agents Mulder and Scully, FBI,” Scully says, showing her badge. 

“We’ve secured the perimeter, SWAT is on the way. I don’t really think this is a Bureau matter.” The sheriff, whose nametag says Thompson, speaks in the steady but slightly defensive tone all local law enforcement officers use when they’re in over their heads. 

“With all due respect, I don’t really think this is a SWAT matter.” Mulder is thankful Scully is speaking, he can’t seem to find his voice. “There’s a young boy in there who’s terrified,” she continues, “the last thing he needs right now is a bunch of strangers in Kevlar bursting in there. He needs a familiar face.”

“And you’re a familiar face?” Thompson shakes her head over Mulder’s shoulder at the deputy’s offer of help. 

Scully glances at Mulder before answering. She wets her lips and says, “He’s an informant in our investigation. We met with him yesterday and we’d really like to speak to him. Please.” 

Sheriff Thompson looks back and forth between them, gives a long, steady exhale. “Alright. One of you can go in. I don’t want to spook the captor.”

Mulder turns to Scully, whose lips are pressed in a thin line. He wants to tell her to go in there, that instinctually, William will be comforted by her, that maybe some tiny part of him still knows that Scully can keep him safe. 

But she shakes her head and says, “It should be you. He contacted you. He trusts you already.”

“Scully, I can’t--”

She grips his arm with a force that has always surprised him. “You _can_.”

Mulder takes a shuddering breath and turns back to the sheriff. “The captor. What’s his name?”

“Harold. Bryce Harold. Owned the place for a little less than a year. An out of towner, don’t think he has any family here.” She signals for her deputy to grab a vest for Mulder. “No criminal record, barely any record at all to speak of. It’s almost as if before a year ago, he didn’t exist. We’re thinking he just snapped.”

A loud thud comes from inside the shop, a man’s scream. Mulder bolts past Thompson, ignoring the shouts that rise up. Inside, the bell above the door jingles but William does not turn around. Behind the counter, a circular checkout center in the middle of the store, he remains focused on Harold. Mulder watches as the man tries to climb over the waist-high linoleum counter and escape, but recoils in pain every time he touches the surface. Mulder sees that the palms of both of his hands are covered in ugly red burns. 

“What are you doing?” Harold screams at William, who seems to be in a trance. 

Mulder moves around the counter, trying to get a better look at the boy. William’s gaze is unwavering, his sharp eyes even bluer than they were yesterday, his complexion blotchy and flushed, like he’s just run a long distance in the cold. 

“William?” Mulder asks. “It’s Fox Mulder. Are you okay?”

William nods his head but doesn’t speak. 

“The kid’s a fucking psycho, he burned me!” Harold screams, trying to catch Mulder’s eye, and jumping back again when the latch on the door sears his flesh. 

“William, you’ve done a great job, but I need you to let Mr. Harold go so we can take him into custody,” Mulder tells his son. 

This time William does speak, a short, terrified, “No!” The expression on his face does not change. 

“It’s okay. It’s okay, William. There’s a whole team of people outside who are going to make sure he doesn’t hurt you. Agent Scully is out there, the sheriff is out there. Nothing bad’s going to happen to you, William. I just need you to… stop whatever you’re doing and let Mr. Harold come out from behind the counter so we can take him away. Can you do that for me, Will?”

“You should take _him_ away, he’s the one who harmed someone here!” Harold shouts. He’s positioned himself as far away from William as the tiny space behind the center console will allow. 

“It’s okay, Will,” Mulder urges. 

William nods and takes a deep breath, the color in his face slowly returning to normal, the sharpness in his eyes dulling sightly. Harold finally pushes open the door of the counter and lunges at Mulder. His yell is lost in the frenzy of activity as the SWAT team descends upon the store, all boots and shouts and the mechanical click of rapid-fire weapons. 

“Don’t shoot!” Scully’s voice rings out. “I repeat, do not discharge your weapons!” 

Mulder turns and she’s standing at the door, weapon raised, eyes wide with something only he recognizes as fear. 

“Hands where we can see ‘em!” a SWAT officer to his left bellows, and it takes Mulder a moment to realize they’re not talking to him. “Hands up, or we’ll shoot!” 

“Do NOT shoot!” Scully shouts. Her chest heaves. 

Harold rises slowly from the floor, screaming red palms facing outward. Mulder doesn’t take his eyes off Scully, who is staring at their son behind the counter. William breathes heavily, hands shaking as he brushes a piece of hair out of his eyes.


	5. Chapter 5

They slide into the car to follow the motorcade back to the police station. She sees Mulder glance at her sidelong, unable to hide his incredulous expression. 

“Just a hunch,” Scully says, the only explanation she offers for her order not to shoot the convenience store owner. 

Mulder drives. His knuckles are white on the wheel and Scully pictures the burns on Harold’s hands, screaming red welts that seemed to throb as he was yanked past her out the door and shoved into the back of a police car.

“William’s not safe here, Scully,” Mulder says. “Remember the texts, to his friend? William knew this guy was bad news and still almost got himself killed.”

“He seemed to have it under control,” she says stiffly. 

They've talked briefly about what she knows of William’s abilities. It had always seemed cruel to bring it up out of nowhere without his asking, and he’d never asked specifically if there was anything unusual about him. It was all teary-eyed things against their pillows in dark motel rooms, things like _what did the top of his head smell like, I don’t remember anymore_ , and _which toy was his favorite?_

So one day she’d just told him. It was January; they were eating dinner and she she’d said, “William could do things I don’t know how to explain.” Mulder had, of course, asked her to explain them. Everything came tumbling out: mobiles that wouldn’t stop moving, toys that she found in the living room when she knew she’d put them away, and of course the night he’d been taken. He had stared at her for a long time, like maybe he didn’t quite recognize her.

Mulder stares at her now as she pulls down the sun visor and cleans up the smudged eyeliner under her eyes. Her face is drawn and pale, her hair dull on this cloudy mountain morning. She does not quite recognize her either. 

“Is there someplace safe for him?” she asks. 

“I can check with Skinner, see about a safehouse that’s not too far. We’ll have to talk to the Van de Kamps first.”

She knows, but it turns her stomach anyway. “What will we tell them?”

“Almost everything.”

X

Scully makes a face as she pours the powdered creamer into her coffee and stirs, cramped in the narrow hallway at the police station. At her request, the sheriff had let William wait in a room by himself until the Van de Kamps arrived, but now Scully wishes she’d thought to allow herself and Mulder access. It is pretty clear to them what happened in the gas station, but she wants to hear it from William himself. 

In the back of her mind she realizes she’s always feared some iteration of this moment, when she would be inevitably faced with the realities of her son’s unusual power. She’d dropped everything so soon after she’d given William up that there are still pieces of him scattered across her life; his cap in her underwear drawer, a loose toy that somehow made its way into her jewelry box, the photo that she keeps behind her insurance cards in her wallet. He is her one loose end in an otherwise tidy life, an unhemmed seam on the tapestry she's woven, and the wicked voice in her mind says, _Pull, and see what happens._

Mulder’s broad hand warms the center of her back as he comes up behind her. She starts. “Skinner says there’s a place in Tulsa where we can take him,” says Mulder. “Wait out the trouble.”

His binaural whisper sends a chill down her spine. At some point in her first year with the Bureau, she’d learned how to communicate in the same thready whisper, barely opening her mouth. “Temporary relocation?” she asks.

“Until things seem stable here. Bryce Harold is probably not alone, there may be others William doesn’t know about.”

Scully takes a deep breath and burns the tip of her tongue on her coffee. “I just wish we could talk to him.”

“Maybe you can,” Mulder says, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper.

“How do you figure?”

“In his dream, William was able to hear the aliens’ message telepathically.”

She narrows her eyes. “But Mulder, I’m not an alien.”

“And neither is William. But he’s got… something, whether it be DNA or some residual memory that makes him able to understand. And call me crazy, Scully, but I think you’ve got it too.”

“I’ll call you something a whole lot worse than crazy. Mulder, that’s absurd. I can’t communicate telepathically.” Scully feels her heart rate pick up, thudding just beneath the surface of her skin.

“Maybe you don’t have to. Maybe all you have to do is be an open vessel for communication. William might be able to do the rest on his own. He did manage to heat the countertop in that gas station to over 400 degrees Fahrenheit, this should be a walk in the park.”

She wets her lips, fear and excitement churning inside her. “I don’t know, Mulder.”

“Scully, we should at least try. They might not let us speak to him again.”

She glances back into the offices, where William sits alone at a table in a room with windows along one wall. She remembers slumping in her living room in the Georgetown apartment, her breasts and back aching, wondering if she had the energy to move to her bed or if she’d be able to get a good night’s sleep on the couch. She remembers the terror that gripped her fourteen years ago when she heard the tinkling of her son’s mobile from the next room when she knew she’d turned it off. 

“Okay,” she agrees. “I’ll try.”

She and Mulder approach the windows, trying not to draw attention to themselves. Mulder taps on the glass once, like a reverently curious child at an aquarium, and William turns to them. His expression is unclear, but he doesn’t look relaxed. Worried, maybe. Tense, but certainly not scared. He’d been in control at the gas station, and he knows it, Scully thinks. She gives him a small wave and he waves back. 

“What if he can figure out who I am?” she asks, her voice thin as she tries to keep her face expressionless. 

“Something tells me if he could, he already would have. Just relax, Scully.”

She takes a deep breath, focuses her concentration and thinks _Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay?_ She becomes increasingly aware of the click of shoes on the floor around the office, the ring of phones, the thrumming of her own heart. _Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay?_

William’s brow furrows and she hears his muffled voice, sees his lips move. “Mom?” he asks.

Scully’s stomach drops and she opens her mouth to speak, but a woman’s voice behind her asks, “Are we allowed to go in and see him?”

She and Mulder turn to find a man and a woman standing there, a little younger than themselves, with strong hands and color in their cheeks. 

“Mr. and Mrs. Van de Kamp,” Scully hears herself say. 

“Please, call us Rick and Hannah.” The man has a head of salt and pepper hair and wears an old, comfortable barn coat. 

“Can we go in and speak to him?” Hannah asks. She is tall with a colorless blonde braid. 

William has come to the glass and watches the four of them interact, his eyes darting back and forth, eyes that an hour ago had pointed with laser-sharp focus at Bryce Harold. 

“Oh, we’re not--” Scully looks to Mulder, brow furrowed. “We’re not police, we’re with the FBI.”

“FBI?” Hannah’s face falls. “What’s going on?” 

“You should talk--”

“Mr. and Mrs. Van de Kamp.” Sheriff Thompson’s voice interrupts. She has taken her hat off but her face remains just as severe. “You can speak to your son now. This way, please.”

She leads them around the corner and into the room where William is being held. Scully watches him embrace Hannah and feels the sting of tears behind her eyes. In her head, she counts to five. Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth...

Thompson draws the blinds to give them some privacy and leaves. When she rounds the corner there is fire in her eyes. “You are not to speak to the family, understood?”

“They thought we were--” Scully begins. 

“I don’t care if they thought you were the president of the United States and a goddamn bodyguard, I am running this investigation, and all questions will go through me, have I made myself clear?”

“No, am I the bodyguard in this analogy?” Mulder asks, in full-blown snark mode. “Because I think Scully definitely fits a presidential profile, but I’ve always seen myself as more of a gardener. I like to work with my hands.”

“Mulder.” Scully stifles a smile, chewing at the inside of her cheek. 

Thompson doesn’t quite know what to make of him and manages to stammer, “You have three minutes to clear out of here before I call the Bureau to lodge a formal complaint against you both.”

“I think you’d find it’ll just get lost in the very large file of complaints against us, Sheriff Thompson,” Mulder boasts.

Scully’s tone is icy when she says, “We came here to conduct our own investigation with this young man, and I have no problem working side by side with your police department to figure out what happened here.”

Thompson sets her jaw and glances between them like she'd done at the gas station. Scully gets the feeling the sheriff believes herself to be part of an elaborate prank. 

Finally Thompson says, “I don’t know why you’re here and I don’t really care, as long as you stay away from our investigation.”

“We want the same thing, Sheriff Thompson,” Scully says evenly. “To keep that boy safe.”

“Well you’ve done a hell of a job, haven’t you?”

Thompson stalks off down the hallway to her office and once she is out of sight, Mulder turns to Scully. “Could you hear him at all? Could he hear you?”

“Nothing,” she sighs, “and he didn’t indicate that he heard me either. It’s a dead end, Mulder.” 

“Well then we’ll just have to find another road, won't we?” 

X

Scully finishes her cup of coffee and is pouring another when her phone rings. She steps out into the hall to take it, gesturing to Mulder to follow her. 

“Scully.”

“Dana, how's the investigation going?” Tad’s voice is the last thing she wants to hear right now. 

“Fine, we’ve ah, made contact and are trying to figure out how to proceed.”

“What do you mean?” he asks. “Is his story legit or not?”

“It's a little more complicated than that.”

“I don't like complicated.” 

Scully looks up at Mulder, pacing the hall beside her. “I'm well aware,” she says tersely. 

“Dana, it's a simple question. I have the evidence. I just need your confirmation that what his friend says is true, so I can air the story, build up the suspense for a few days, then interview him in a primetime slot.” 

She holds Mulder’s gaze and says into the receiver, “It's not true, Tad.”

The reporter is silent for a moment, and then he says, “So that thing this morning, the hostage situation--that wouldn't have anything to do with our young Mr. Van Kamp, would it?”

“Van de Kamp,” she snaps. “Look, I said it's complicated.”

“We agreed on 72 hours, Dana. I need to know by tomorrow night, or I'm moving forward with this.”

“You're not worried about your reputation? Breaking a false story?” 

“I know it's not false.”

“Then why seek me out? Why bother to check at all?” 

“Scully,” Mulder says gently, inclining his head back to the police offices, where the Van de Kamps have emerged from the private room, William following behind. He meets Scully’s eyes eagerly and she wonders, not for the first time, if he knows somehow. 

“I have to go,” she says, and hangs up. Mulder opens the door for her and they reenter the office. 

“Agent Scully?” Rick asks, his coat folded over his arm. He looks smaller without it, though he is taller than Mulder and his shoulders span wider. “Could we all talk, do you think?” 

“Yes, but I don’t think it’s safe here,” she answers, glancing around. She thinks she catches Mulder smiling at her admiringly. 

“Is there somewhere we can meet tonight?” he asks the Van de Kamps. 

“There’s a diner,” Hannah says slowly, “just outside city limits. 9:30?”

“We’ll see you there,” Scully says. 

As she and Mulder walk back out to their car, he points at her phone, still gripped tightly in her hand. “Tad?” he asks. 

She sighs. “He's pressing for answers. I have no interest in seeing William on television twice in the same week. And if he can't get us to corroborate the story, I'm sure he'll try to reach out to Caleb, William’s friend.”

“We’ll have to make sure Caleb can't be reached then.”

“Is that even possible these days?”

“Let me give Keegan a call.”

X

“The laptop will be hard,” Keegan says. His round face is illuminated by the watery blue glow of his computer monitors. “It's provided by his school and has VPN connectivity to their network. I'm not sure if I'll be able to corrupt the hardware without doing damage to other machines on the network.”

“It's a risk we have to take,” Scully says, settling down beside Mulder at the table in their hotel room. “We have to make sure Caleb or his parents can't be reached in any way.” 

“It doesn't look like they have a landline, so that makes things a little easier.” 

Scully is exhausted suddenly and leans into Mulder’s arm a little bit. She's not sure where they stand. She's not sure if she needs to know. The incredible swell of affection she feels every time she sees him is no longer accompanied by a sting of regret or a twinge of remorse. The shadow that had been dogging him when she'd left seems to have lifted, helped by his website and Keegan and Caroline, his rowing machine, and the pill he takes every morning. He seems renewed; he's driven with the same intensity he was 23 years ago but the darkness is gone from his hazel eyes. The slump in his shoulders has straightened out. Mulder: Collector’s Edition. 

“You okay?” he asks tenderly, his voice low. 

“Just tired,” she answers, shutting her eyes and inhaling deeply. 

“You guys can go to sleep, writing this bug will take most of the night anyway,” Keegan says. “I'll text you in the morning when it's done.” 

“Thanks kid,” Mulder says, and closes his laptop. 

He doesn't rise from the chair just yet and he moves to put his arm around her shoulder. She closes her eyes for a moment, tries to focus on the beating of his heart. _Can we really keep him safe?_ , she doesn't ask him. _Are we making the right decision? Will I ever forgive myself?_

“What’s going on in there?” Mulder asks quietly, his lips at her temple. 

“The last time I had to make a decision about his safety,” she says, her throat dry, “I had to make it alone. I’m glad it’s different this time.”

They sit like that until the clock on the nightstand reads 9pm, then he kisses the top of her head and gently pulls her to her feet. They drive to the diner in near silence. In the car they interlock their fingers and rest them on the center console. The GPS mumbles between them.


	6. Chapter 6

Scully pokes at their shared plate of hashbrowns, curling her lip at the sickly sweet ketchup that plops down from the bottle as Mulder slams the ‘57 with the heel of his hand.

“Did you know that the second ingredient in ketchup is high fructose corn syrup?” 

“Did you know that in the 1980s that this part of Wyoming was home to not one, not two, but three mass-producing oil refineries?”

She sighs, not sure what she expected. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“I’m assuming you told SWAT not to shoot this morning because you suspected Bryce Harold to be a shapeshifter and a carrier of the black oil virus, therefore possessing green, foaming blood, fatal to all humans encountered thus far?”

Is this really her life? Sometimes she can scarcely believe it. “Yes,” she sighs.

“And if you were an extraterrestrial species trying to assimilate into an unassuming population, wouldn’t you settle in a place where possession of a seemingly innocuous oil was commonplace?”

Scully spears a clump of potatoes with her fork, trying to wipe off the ketchup on the side of the plate. “Are you suggesting that a community of aliens has been lying in wait here for over thirty years and has now seized this moment to launch their attack?”

“I think they got found out.”

“By William?”

“I think their cover was blown and Harold panicked. So he tried to hold William hostage at the gas station this morning and--”

“It backfired.” She is a little proud. If any of it’s true. 

“Well what’s your theory?” Mulder challenges, taking up a huge forkful of hashbrowns. 

The door opens behind him and in walks William and the Van de Kamps. _Sounds like a rock band_ , she thinks, _William and the Van de Kamps_. Scully hopes, selfishly, that the lead singer isn't reluctant to part from his band members. 

She scoots down in the booth to make room for them and William slides in beside her. 

“Hi,” he says, giving her a small smile. For a second she gets a glimpse, a memory of her brother Charlie grinning before he took off down the beach after a flock of seagulls one summer, her mother shouting from the other side of the sand dunes. William looks so much like him that she fears it's just as obvious to the Van de Kamps and that someone will say something.

No one does. Hannah slides in next. Rick takes a seat across from them, beside Mulder. 

“They recommend this serving size for two,” her partner jokes nervously, gesturing to the plate of hashbrowns between them. “But I’m not very good at sharing.”

“That’s alright, we really just want to talk,” Hannah says politely. 

It’s been less than twelve hours since Scully’s seen her last and already Hannah looks older. The bags under her eyes are more pronounced, and instead of looking strong and weather-worn she just looks tired. Rick’s face is mostly obscured by a baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes. There is a weariness to him Scully hadn’t noticed earlier. 

Mulder must sense it too, because the next thing out of his mouth is, “Did someone come and talk to you? Threaten you in any way? Threaten William?”

“A group of men,” William answers. “All in suits. Said they’d come to take us to a safe house. But they’re weren’t… they weren’t the good guys. I could tell.”

“Like you could tell Mr. Harold wasn’t a good guy,” Mulder supplies.

William nods. “I just get this feeling, and… Dad got out his gun, said we weren’t going without a fight, but they said they’d be back.”

“They said they were FBI,” Rick grunts. 

Scully glances across the table to Mulder. “You must be having reservations about us,” she sighs, “but I want you both to know that Agent Mulder and I share your interest in William’s wellbeing. We would never want any harm to come to your son.”

“They’re the real deal, Mom,” William says, looking expectantly at Hannah. 

“Will showed us your blog, Agent Mulder,” she says. 

“Always nice to meet a fan,” Mulder jokes. Scully winces, silently begs him not to embarrass them, or himself.

“We were surprised, at first, that he’d contacted a total stranger instead of saying something to us,” Hannah sighs, voice heavy with the worried self-martyrdom that motherhood somehow turns out to be. “But when he told us why--”

“We weren’t surprised to hear what he’d been experiencing,” Rick offers. “William is an extraordinary boy.”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” William grumbles, picking at the ridged chrome edge of the table.

“You knew he was able to do things like this?” Mulder asks. “Heating surfaces?”

“Among other things,” Rick says. 

Mulder glances at Scully. “Moving small things without touching them?”

Hannah nods, speaking delicately. “Ever since he came into our lives--”

“You can say it, Mom. You can say I’m adopted,” William sighs. “I’m sure they know anyway.”

Scully feels a sharp jolt in her abdomen, something that is more than pain. For a moment, her ears ring and her vision blurs and she thinks she might pass out. Beneath the table, she feels Mulder’s leg, strong and warm, brush against hers, and she lets out a deep breath. _I accept that I am here_ , she tells herself, an affirmation exercise her therapist taught her. 

On the other side of William, Hannah sighs. “We’ve known for some time that William has certain… abilities. But he never mentioned these dreams.”

“Dreams are pretty common among past and future abductees,” Mulder supplies. 

“Future?...” Hannah pales, whiter than the diner plate that sits between the five of them, hashbrowns turning cold. 

“Mrs. Van de Kamp, we really don’t want to alarm you, but William is in danger,” Scully says, her voice low. “The attack today--we suspect Bryce Harold is not alone in your community. That there are others here, all over the country, that seek to harm him.”

“Why him?” Rick asks, forearms resting heavily on the cracked ice-laminate tabletop. 

“That we don’t know.” Scully finds no trouble bending the truth, since she and Mulder don’t really know what’s causing William’s unique connection with extraterrestrials either. “But it’s become clear that William isn’t safe here.”

There is a pause, a breath at the table. No one wants to ask what has to happen next. Scully is reminded of the moment when a patient’s scans come back and no one in the lab wants to verbalize that a tumor has returned. 

“I’ll go with Agent Mulder and Agent Scully,” William says after a moment, still looking down at the table. “Until it’s safe to come home.” He looks up at Mulder across the table, then turns to meet Scully’s eyes. “Is that okay?” 

“If your--” Scully’s voice catches in her throat and she finds herself unable to say _if your parents say it’s okay._

“We want him to be safe,” Rick says after another moment. “Does the FBI have a place like that?”

Scully nods, and when she talks her throat is still dry. “There’s a safehouse we’ve been authorized to use, just outside of Omaha. We’ll send you the details in an encrypted message.”

“And you’ll be with him the whole time?” Hannah asks. “Is there some kind of security detail?”

“Mom…” William groans.

Mulder cracks a smile, and meets Scully’s eyes. “We’ll see what we can do,” he says.

“Promise you’ll look after him,” Hannah says, and it’s clear she’s trying very hard not to cry. 

“We won’t let him out of our sight,” Mulder assures her. 

William turns and smiles up at her with a look of nervous excitement probably only able to be produced by a 14-year-old boy. _We won’t let him out of our sight. Not this time_ , Scully thinks. 

X

She is still lying fully clothed on the bed when Mulder comes out of the shower. A cloud of steam follows him out and he grips her knee with a damp hand, a reassuring squeeze. She knows she needs to move, to at least attempt a good night's sleep before their long drive tomorrow. They'd decided to drive. It seemed safer, especially if William had enemies here. Who knew what else grasped for him in the darkness, for them all?

Scully rolls over in time to catch a long glimpse of Mulder’s ass before he pulls his boxers up. 

“Before I left I had this recurring dream I was being buried alive,” she says suddenly. He stills, long arms slack at his sides, and she continues. “Soil in my mouth, worms snaking in my hair. That warm smell of dirt in my nose. It was peaceful, almost-- comfortable before I’d realize what was happening and I’d try to scream and I couldn’t.”

He sits on the edge of the bed, his face in shadow. “That’s terrifying.”

She nods, wets her lips, still staring at the ceiling. “What was terrifying was waking up and still feeling it. Still being--crushed by aliens and monsters and missing time and boys without mothers.”

Mulder looks down at the paisley motel comforter, unable to meet her eyes. “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

“I didn’t tell you,” she says hoarsely. “And if we’re going to do this I wanted you to know.” 

“I always thought I'd die without you,” Mulder says quietly after a moment. “After all, I have before.”

Scully manages a tender chuckle and pulls him to her, folding her body against his, reveling in the miracle that either of their hearts are still beating. 

“But I didn't die,” he says with her head against his chest, “and that was even scarier.” 

She takes off her jacket and her blouse, fingers slipping on the buttonholes. He watches her reverently in the soft yellow light from the lamp, just like he had the very first night she’d knocked on his door over twenty years ago. Something in her then had trusted him implicitly, this Massachusetts boy with the gall to root for the Yankees, the federal agent who doubted his government. Life with Mulder is anything but ordinary.

“I’m still in love with you,” she says, straddling him. Her skirt pools in her lap. 

“Of course,” he exhales, and their lips meet again and again. 

X

The paper cup does precious little to keep her hands from burning, and she hisses through her teeth, shifting her coffee back and forth between her hands. The sun has risen but hasn’t yet come over the mountain, so the Van de Kamp’s house sits in shadow, a crunchy layer of frost on the ground even though it’s May. Mulder stands beside her, hands in his pockets, looking like he wishes he hadn’t left his coffee in the car.

Last night after they’d cleaned up and showered, they spread a road map out across the bed between them and mapped their route for the next two days. Taking interstates all the way was too risky; if anyone was watching William--or them--it would be easy to track. She’d propped herself up on an elbow and pointed to a state road that ran east-to-west. Her bare breasts brushed the cold creases in the map, and she’d caught Mulder grinning at the sight of her erect nipples over California. They easily could have looked up routes online, but there was something so uniquely them about huddling together over a fold-out map in a musty hotel room that it seemed silly to consider any other possibility. 

The door to the farmhouse opens, and William emerges with a duffle bag slung over his shoulder. His hair is tousled from sleep and he’s wearing a hoodie that looks a little too big for him. Scully’s breath catches in her throat and she understands suddenly that this is really happening, that her sweet baby boy is going to travel across the country with her and Mulder. Frantic for a moment, she glances to her partner.

_You can do this_ , Mulder’s glance says, and she blinks, a silent thank you, their Morse code of eyelashes. She gives a friendly wave to Rick and Hannah, who have appeared on the porch behind the boy they call their son. Neither appear to have slept. 

“You grabbed your toothbrush, right?” Hannah asks, and William grumbles assent. 

“You left your phone on the kitchen table?” Rick checks. Mulder had given them detailed instructions on how to destroy William’s SIM card last night before they’d parted ways. Scully makes a mental note to text Keegan and see if he was successful in taking Caleb offline.

“Listen to Agent Mulder and Agent Scully,” Hannah says quietly, her expression similar to the one Scully sees when she gives parents at the hospital a prognosis. Her mouth is a flat line but the muscles around her eyes twitch just enough that Scully can tell she’s trying not to cry. 

Hannah pulls their son--because that’s what he is, really, he’s all of theirs--into a breathless hug that seems to say, _I have to believe I’ll see you again._ Scully has given and received it enough times to recognize it. Hannah kisses the top of William’s head, and Scully remembers doing it herself when he had far less hair. Rick extends a firm handshake, and then grips William gruffly by the shoulders and pats him on the back, grunting a departing word in his ear before he lets go. 

Mulder holds out a thin burner phone. “Both our numbers are in here. If you get in trouble, call us. Don’t text.”

“When we make it to Omaha we’ll reach out,” Scully continues. 

“If anyone says we sent them, or they’re with the FBI or any other government agency, do not go with them,” Mulder emphasizes. 

Hannah nods slowly. “How long do you think he’ll need to hide?”

Scully glances at her partner. “It’s difficult to say. We’re hoping it won’t be more than a week. After that, relocation for the entire family might be necessary.”

Rick looks around sadly. The adoption agency had said the farm stretching out to the left and right of the main house had been in his family for nearly fifty years. They’d been a safe choice, Scully remembers. High stability, low flight risk. Strong community. Isolated area. She never thought she’d get him back. She never thought she’d end up being the one who saved him.

“We should hit the road before it gets too late,” Mulder says, thumbing at the car behind them. 

“Of course.” Hannah gives William one more hug, and then the three of them walk down the stairs. Scully pops the trunk and he slides his bag in between hers and Mulder’s. _Too big, too small, just right,_ she thinks, her heart pounding fast. 

As she drives away, it occurs to her that this is the first time the three of them have been in a car together.


	7. Chapter 7

Mulder awakens to the sound of a revving engine. In the driver’s seat, Scully grumbles, “If you’re gonna pass me, pass me!”

He shifts in his seat, wincing at a dull pain in his shoulder. Gone are the days of all-nighters and pursuing suspects on foot and coffee for breakfast. He’s maintained his health, but even Fox Mulder has his limits, and apparently he’s approaching his threshold for maximum number of hours he can spend in a car.

“Asshole…” Scully mutters at the vehicle beside them. She slows a little and lets the U-Haul overtake them. 

“You want a break? You’ve been driving all day.” He stretches his legs in the floorboard, still not able to straighten them all the way out. 

“I figured we’d stop for the night up here,” she says. She points to a highway sign that glows an iridescent green.

“Phillipsburg,” Mulder proclaims in a booming voice.

“Shh!” Scully scolds, glancing in the rearview mirror. “He’s sleeping.”

Mulder glances back at their son. William is slumped in the backseat, leaning against the door. The collar of his jacket obscures most of his face but the peppering of freckles under his eyes peeks out, soft lashes brushing cheeks that look like his mother’s. If a million things had been different, would they have sped across the country as a family fourteen years ago? 

Like she can read his mind, Scully says, “I know.”

Mulder gives her hand a squeeze, then reaches into the cupholder to tear open a bag of sunflower seeds. “You ever noticed how U-Hauls always have Arizona license plates?” he asks, cracking a seed between his teeth.

“I always assumed that’s where they’re headquartered,” Scully says. Her bright eyes dart to the side mirror before she shifts lanes. 

“Arizona has loose tag renewal laws,” William says from the backseat, and they both jump. 

“Hope I didn’t wake you up, kiddo,” Mulder says. 

“It’s okay, I’ve been up for a while.” Their son stretches, seeking space in the cramped sedan. 

“Ah, the old pretend-to-be-asleep trick.” He’d pulled it off many times in his own youth, piecing together stories about neighbors and work from murmurs that drifted back from the front seat. WASPs always whispered. 

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“That depends, what did you hear?” Mulder challenges. He is mostly playful but a little serious. 

“Just your snoring,” William retorts with a grin. “And your singing, Agent Scully. You might want to keep your day job.”

Mulder lets out a booming laugh and Scully titters in the driver’s seat. 

Eventually, Mulder comes to her aid. “I’m the only one who’s allowed to mock Agent Scully’s singing voice.”

“And he never does because he knows better,” Scully chides, flipping her blinker. 

They take the next exit, and pull in at a gas station with a small fast food restaurant attached. It’s about to close, Mulder figures, glancing at the attendant sweeping up trash and turning off lights. He turns to Scully and does his best Shaggy. “Let’s split up, gang!”

She ignores him. “You and William run inside and get food,” she instructs. “I’ll get gas.”

“Can we get milkshakes?” William asks him as they climb out of the car, all long limbs and tousled hair. 

“We’ll see.” 

Their shoes squeak against the newly-mopped floor of the off-brand McDonald’s, making the two teenagers behind the counter look up at them in exasperation. Mulder orders two chicken sandwiches for himself and Scully, and lets William have a milkshake along with the burger he orders. 

They stand off to the side while they wait for their food. It’s five minutes from closing and the overhead music has been turned off, making the place eerily quiet. 

William studies his feet and says, “Thanks for answering my email.”

Mulder smiles. “Thanks for emailing me.”

“So you and Agent Scully used to do this all the time, right? Research stuff like this. People like me.”

_There’s no one like you,_ Mulder thinks, remembering the weight of him in his arms when he was no bigger than a loaf of bread. “This was a big part of what we did,” he says. “Sometimes we’d hear about things in the news, online. Things that warranted investigation.”

“But you haven’t done it in a while,” William continues, like he’s reciting facts for an exam. “Because the government framed you and Agent Scully when you got too close to the truth and you had to go into hiding.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Mulder notices the only other customer in the restaurant, a plump elderly woman with brown hair and a dark rain jacket. She’s been staring at them for the past several minutes, which surprises him. Her MUFON training definitely taught her to be less obvious. She’s approached him several times before as a source, but he’s surprised to see her here. His pulse quickens; Mulder looks back at William and smiles. 

“That’s right,” he says tightly, trying to pick up the thread of the conversation again. He wonders, for the first time, if his website has been his son’s way of getting to know him, know the truth. 

“So how come you started doing it again?” William asks. “Why’d you guys come back to the FBI?”

“We wanted to help you,” he says. It’s not a lie; god, it’s all they’ve ever wanted to do. Mulder glances nervously at the woman in her booth, loudly sucking down a milkshake. 

“Yeah, but people must email you all the time about stuff like this,” William presses. “Why’d you listen to me?”

_Because I haven’t seen you since you were a few weeks old,_ doesn’t seem like an appropriate answer. But William does have a point. Since starting his website seven years ago, Mulder gets dozens of emails a month from people asking for help, advice, for someone to come take a look at the crop circles that popped up in their backyard overnight. It was part of the reason he’d taken on Keegan, initially, just to handle all the requests. 

Mulder realizes William is still waiting for an answer. “Because when you’re a kid people talk at you a lot, and I wanted to be the person who listened.”

William looks up from the floor and smiles, a close-lipped gesture of appreciation that looks just like his mother’s. 

“Two chicken deluxe meals and a Lucky Burger,” calls one of the teenagers from behind the counter.

William darts to get the food and Mulder’s contact rises from her booth with her trash. He doesn’t know her real name, doesn’t need to, but the name he knows her by is Elaine. She looks to the world like an innocuous grandmother, but he’s seen her shoot men at point-blank range and not blink. 

“Mickey Mantle had 537 career home runs,” she says in passing, their signal that vital information is about to be relayed. The old woman walks to the trashcan by the door, dumps her cup, burger wrapper, and empty ketchup holders. 

“Actually, it was 536,” Mulder answers, his heart thudding. If Elaine is here, something must be terribly wrong. Since coming out of hiding she’s been one of his primary contacts and trusted informants. 

“Don’t go to Omaha,” Elaine says quietly. She pretends to dig for something in her purse. “That plan’s been compromised.” 

“Ketchup?” William calls from the counter.

“No ketchup!” Mulder hollers back. He hears the fear in his voice. Still not looking directly at Elaine, he hisses, “What the hell’s going on?”

“Reroute to your HQ, and wait for further instructions.”

Mulder thinks of his house, the house that used to be theirs, and tries to picture the three of them sitting on the couch in the living room together. It makes his head swim. “We’ll make it work.” 

“Be safe,” says Elaine, and then she’s out the door. 

William returns, struggling to carry three paper bags and a drink tray. “Everything okay?”

“We’re going to have to change course a little.”

“Who was that?” his son asks, craning his neck to see outside. 

“Someone we should listen to. Come on.”

X

Scully leans against the car under a flickering light above the gas pump, phone pressed to her ear. She’s shed her blazer and rolled up the sleeves of her button-down, looking sharper than he ever has. Her dark slacks rest just below her trim waist, and Mulder thinks of standing next to her and resting his hand there, letting her drop her head to his shoulder. Lately all he wants to do is hold her and maybe never let her go. 

She nods at Mulder when she sees them coming. “Okay,” she says into her phone. “Thanks Caroline.”

“News?” Mulder asks, handing her a soda. William stops to read the bumper stickers on the car behind theirs. 

Her voice is low. “Caroline and Keegan took the friend, Caleb, offline. No communication in or out.”

“Good. Elaine made contact.”

She raises her eyebrows as she takes a drink. 

“Change of plans,” Mulder says quietly. “We’re taking him to the house.”

“You’re kidding. Here?”

“She came up to him inside,” William says quietly, approaching and taking another sip of his drink. 

“We probably won’t be able to stop to sleep somewhere tonight, are you alright with that?” Scully asks Will, her eyes intense and focused. 

Their son nods his head. “Sure.”

“Good,” she says, taking the bags from Mulder. “You drive,” she instructs. 

Mulder chuckles as he opens the door and slides into the driver’s seat. “Yes ma’am.”

X

He’s never been able to forget the winding roads around the Vineyard, and how one night, his father had pulled off the road and said, “You drive for a while.” In retrospect, he was probably drunk, but Mulder, no older than William is now, had taken the wheel and driven them home, and before his father let them inside, he’d said, “Don’t tell your mother.” When Mulder was in hiding the second time, lying awake at night for hours thinking of the few moments he’d gotten to spend with his son, he dreamed of the “don’t tell your mother” moments he’d get to have with William, and the indignant look on Scully’s face when she inevitably found out. 

So somewhere past Kansas City, Mulder turns to William and says, “You ever driven before?”

His son’s features are illuminated for a moment in the headlights of the car on the other side of the highway. Mulder can tell he’s not sure how to answer. The car passes and they are plunged into darkness again. Mulder blinks several times. A song he remembers but doesn’t know very well plays on the radio, the clearest signal they’ve gotten in hours.

“Tractors,” William says finally. “And my friend Caleb sometimes lets me drive his truck.” 

Mulder clears his throat. 

“Never on busy roads through,” William assures him. “Just like, for fun and stuff.”

Mulder glances into the backseat. Scully sleeps soundlessly, jackknifed under her blazer. A drop of drool rests in the corner of her mouth and a smudge of makeup colors the inside of her collar. William glances back at her as well for a moment. He seems to have an immense amount of respect for her, Mulder notices, although Scully demands respect from everyone she encounters, and receives it. She is difficult to ignore, even snoozing in the backseat. 

“What do you say we have some fun and stuff?” Mulder whispers conspiratorially. 

“Really?” William asks. His eyes might be bluer than his mother’s.

Mulder pulls the car over and onto the shoulder. “Just for a few miles. There’s no one around, it’s the middle of the night.”

William grins. “Okay.”

They switch places quickly; Mulder knows that if they stay stopped for too long, the lack of movement will wake Scully. 

“It handles pretty well,” he says from the passenger seat. “It’s a six cylinder, so it’s probably got a little more pickup than you’re used to.”

William accelerates and the car jerks forward on the shoulder. “Sorry!” he whispers. 

“Check your mirrors,” Mulder instructs, pointing. 

William reaches up and adjusts the rearview, then fiddles with the one on the side. After looking over his shoulder and craning his neck to peer at the passenger side mirror, he accelerates, slowly this time, and merges seamlessly into the rightmost lane. 

“You can go a little faster if you want, there’s no one around,” Mulder suggests. He points at the speed limit sign. “Never under, never more than ten over.”

William nods, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “Got it.” 

They drive in silence for a few moments, and once Mulder thinks it’s been long enough, he says, “How long has--”

At the same time, William blurts, “What was it like when you were abducted?” Mulder barely has time to process the question before the boy stammers, “Sorry, what--what were you gonna say?”

“No, you go first.” Mulder clears his throat.

William glances at him sidelong. He swallows. “On your website, in some of your stories and interviews, you mention… that you were abducted.”

“I was.”

“What was it like? What did they do to you?”

Mulder is reminded why he likes children so much; they have not yet learned what is and isn’t pertinent to ask. Their desire for knowledge and answers outweighs any constructed boundaries that might hinder most adults. They aren’t afraid to ask the questions that make you squirm in your seat, so for his son’s sake, Mulder thinks back to the time he usually chooses to forget. “A lot of it I can’t remember,” he says. “But I know it was lonely. I missed Scully very much.”

William’s hands grip the wheel tightly, fingers drumming the underside. His cuticles are ragged. Mulder wonders if his son bites his nails, like he himself once did. 

“And they hurt you?” William asks. “Did tests and stuff?”

Mulder wets his lips. “William, that’s not going to happen to you. We’re not going to let you get taken.”

William doesn’t speak for a moment, and when he does, his tone is forced even, trying not to be argumentative. “You can’t promise that though.”

“Agent Scully and I are specifically trained to protect against this kind of threat.”

“Then how come you’ve both been abducted?”

Mulder almost wants to laugh but he’s too frustrated. “That happened a long time ago. We’ve learned a lot since then.”

“I’m starting to think that nobody really knows what they’re doing,” William says, chewing his bottom lip. “That everybody’s just kind of making it up as they--”

The figure appears out of nowhere, dead center in their lane of traffic. It looks human to Mulder, but slightly taller than the average person, thicker, wider. William jerks the wheel to the right and Mulder course-corrects, straining against his seatbelt. They skid to a stop in the shoulder lane. The rumble strips make Mulder’s ears ring. 

Scully shoots up from the backseat. Her hair is messy on one side. “What’s wrong?” 

Mulder draws his gun, his hand on the door handle. “You have any tranqs on you?”

“What? No…” She pushes the hair out of her eyes. 

“Let me go with you,” William says, his hands still gripping the wheel like his life depends on it. 

“No,” Mulder says, firmly, and Scully’s voice echoes the same sentiment in his ear. “When we get out, lock the car. Don’t open the door, no matter what happens.”

“It’s going to be fine, okay?” Scully says, reaching into her bag and extracting her own weapon. She reaches up and gives William’s shoulder a squeeze, then does a double-take. “Were you driving?”

Mulder takes this moment to make his exit and opens the door. The air is colder than he expected. Goosebumps pop up along his arms, bare save for his white t-shirt. He and Scully approach the figure slowly, weapons raised. 

“What do you want?” Scully barks, in that shouty voice she uses to talk to perps. 

The figure crosses into the beams cast by their headlights. His face is placeable yet forgettable; they’ve seen him before, in one of his many iterations. Back then, they’d called him a shapeshifter.


	8. Chapter 8

“I have a message for the boy,” the man says.

Scully holds her gun steady with two hands, trying not to shake. “You’re not speaking to him.”

“I already have,” the man replies. “He needs to be updated on the situation.”

“If you take one more step I will shoot,” Mulder threatens in a panicky voice. Scully knows he’s bluffing but she feels the fear radiating off him; he’s not usually like this in confrontations. 

The man shakes his head at her. “You know better than to do that.”

“What we know is that you’re not coming anywhere near us,” Scully snaps. She watches the way his hulking body moves in the dark, nearly twice her size. 

“It’s okay,” William’s voice says from behind her. “I’ve seen him before.”

Mulder inclines his head back toward the car. “William. Stay in the car please.”

“He’s come to talk to me before,” William continues.

“In your dream? Or like this?” Scully asks, not taking her eyes off the man or lowering her weapon. 

“Threat is imminent,” the man, the shapeshifter, the--whatever, says. “Now more than ever.”

“Don’t come any closer, William,” Mulder warns. 

“A war is coming, and you need to be protected,” says the shapeshifter. “It’s almost time.”

“They can protect me,” William says, pointing to Mulder and Scully. She feels a simultaneous swell of pride and rage. _You can’t,_ the wicked voice whispers. 

“For how long?” the man asks. His deep voice rumbles so low Scully’s not sure whether or not she hears thunder. When she blinks, the man is gone. 

X

Backlit in the twin beams of the headlights, her son looks like one of the saints in the illustrated Bible she’d grown up reading. No one talks for a very long time. The Midwestern wind whips past them, ballooning out her shirt that has come untucked from her waistband. She feels very dizzy, unable to find her footing on the highway. She glances down at her watch to check the time and realizes she isn’t wearing one. 

Scully reaches out and Mulder takes her wrist delicately in his hand, strong thumbs coming to rest over her pulse. He applies the slightest amount of pressure and she lets her eyes slide closed. 

Once, she’d been performing an autopsy on a young man, seventeen or eighteen. She recorded all the usual notations: facial lacerations ranging from 2 to 6 millimeters long. Two stab wounds to the abdomen between ribs 7 and 8, 3 and 4 centimetres long. Teeth: healthy, molars 1 and 16 recently extracted. Eyes: brown, unblemished, no noticeable signs of petechiae. And suddenly she’d been crying, fat wet tears that hit the report of death form and smudged her looping blue cursive. 

_You are entitled to your emotions, Dana,_ her therapist tells her again and again. 

_But I gave him up,_ is always her reply, tight and high in her throat, keeping a sob down. 

_Sooner or later you’re going to have to forgive yourself._

Scully takes William by the hand and pulls him close to her chest, resting her chin on his shoulder. He is nearly as tall as her, probably will outgrow her in a month or so. He smells like clean soap and a little like Axe body spray.

“I’m okay,” he mumbles after a moment. 

She nods. “I know. I know you are.” She does not let go. William shifts his weight, arms finally coming to rest around her midsection, loose and unsure. Mulder rubs her elbow and she pulls away from William finally. Their son does not say anything. 

Her phone buzzes in her pocket, a disembodied appendage, a phantom limb of reality. A wave of nausea hits her when she sees the name flash across the screen. 

“Excuse me.” She walks past the car and picks up. “It’s two in the goddamn morning, Tad. What the hell do you want?”

“Two, you say? So that puts you somewhere in Central Time?”

Scully curses under her breath. “This phone is untraceable.”

“I’m not trying to trace you, I’m just trying to get answers. We had a deal, Dana. You’ve got to deliver.”

“The only deal we had was that Mulder and I would investigate and report back to you if the story was true. We’ve discovered that Caleb’s claims about William Van de Kamp are unfounded.”

There is a long pause. She thinks she might have convinced him. Finally he speaks. “Well you better be telling the truth. I haven’t been able to get a hold of Caleb at all today. It’s like he’s dropped off the grid completely. You wouldn’t have anything to do with that, would you?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

Tad changes the subject. “So… case closed, then. You and Mulder are headed back to DC?”

Scully rubs her temple and sighs, “Yes. All I want is to be home.”

“Well I’m sorry for wasting your time.”

“Get some sleep, Tad,” Scully says, and she almost means it sincerely. She had cared for him once, at least a little bit. 

After she hangs up, she realizes that when she’d spoken of home, it wasn’t her apartment that she pictured. 

X

Mulder and William lean against the hood of the car as she approaches, their gangly legs stretched out before them. They both gaze skyward, alternating between pointing up and tapping around some program on Mulder’s iPad. Her son’s eyelashes are like his father’s, she notices, unbelievably long and dark. 

“You boys okay?” she asks, crossing her arms over her chest against the cold. 

“Come look at this,” Mulder says. 

His screen is an LED version of the sky above them, littered with even more stars than they can see now. As he moves the tablet, labelled constellations appear, cosmic connect-the-dots. Elaborate drawings of what they represent appear as well; the seated twins, the bear cub, the harp. If it were summertime, she thinks, they’d probably be able to see the Milky Way. 

“Are you interested in astronomy, Will?” she asks quietly, hoping he doesn't mind the shortening of his name from either of them. 

The boy nods. “It’s like a whole other world up there. All the stars have their own stories and connections.”

“I had a friend in undergrad,” Mulder says, “who believed that the observation and classification of stars and constellations was man’s pathetic attempt to bring order to a cosmos that was too vast to possibly understand. He saw astronomy as a means of harnessing something wild and free, our earthly sense of rules and order applied to the most organic thing in existence.”

Scully raises an eyebrow. “What was your response?”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” William cuts in before Mulder can answer. “Astronomy is a science. It’s literally the job of science to order and classify the things we see around us. There’s nothing harnessing about studying the sky. It makes us free. It shows us how important our part in the universe is, and how small. Astronomy is the study of us.”

Scully worries she might weep, then looks at Mulder and thinks he may beat her to it. 

“I’ve only seen him once before,” William says a few minutes later. None of them seem able to get back into the car. Their son slurps on the remainder of his milkshake, liquified by this point. 

“That man?” Mulder clarifies. “The shapeshifter?”

Will shrugs. “Sure.”

“When did you see him?” Scully asks gently. 

“I was walking home from a friend’s house and he just came out of nowhere on the side of the road. Kind of like tonight. He told me that war was coming and that he was here to protect me.”

“He looked the same?” Mulder asks. “Like he looked tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“And he spoke in English--just like he did now?” Scully asks.

William’s eyebrows knit together. “That wasn’t English.”

She feels her pulse quicken. “What do you mean?”

“That wasn’t English, Scully,” Mulder says beside her. “Whatever he was speaking, I couldn’t make out any of it.”

It begins to make sense: the panic in his voice, the fear she’d felt emanating from him--Mulder hadn’t been able to understand what the shapeshifter was saying. But somehow, she could. She hadn’t even thought twice about it. 

“That’s the language from my dream,” Will says. “How were you able to understand it?”

She can measure her life in moments like this: standing on the side of the road facing a truth that challenges everything she believes in, so desperate for answers that she sees red. 

X

They stop somewhere in Ohio and Mulder pulls her behind a rack of Columbus State hats as she turns the corner from the restroom. Instinctively, she reaches for her gun but his hand arrives at her waistband before hers does.

“Are you alright?” he whispers.

“I will be if you don’t do shit like that,” she hisses on a shaky exhale. 

“Sorry. I just meant--”

“I know what you meant.” Scully sighs sharply. 

“Do you think this happened during your abduction? That that’s why you were able to understand an alien language?”

“If that’s true, why weren’t you able to understand it as well?” she whispers. She glances around, making sure William hasn’t come out of the bathroom yet. 

“We both know that our abduction experiences were very different,” Mulder says, and his eyes take on that sympathetic look she hates getting from people, most of all him. 

“Mulder, if I could understand the language and William could understand the language, it could mean that we share genetic material that allows us to do so.”

“What, like… alien DNA?”

Scully grimaces and raises her eyebrows. “If by _alien_ you mean non-human then I don’t--”

“You know that’s what I mean,” Mulder huffs. 

“The sequencing and genes themselves may vary from those we’re used to seeing, but that hardly makes it extraterrestrial. All living things share the same four nucleotides, Mulder. Perhaps it’s nothing more than the flip of an epigenetic switch.”

“Hey.” A voice catches her attention. She and Mulder look up to the register where William stands with a bag of Doritos. “Can I get these?” he asks. 

“Only 99 cents,” says the man behind the register. “Come on, Dad.”

Scully’s face reddens and her eyes burn. “It’s fine,” she murmurs, giving the approval she knows Mulder wants to ask her for. He fishes through his wallet and pays in cash. 

“Thanks,” William says on the way out to the car. Mulder pats William’s shoulder. Scully sees him wipe his eye before he gets back behind the wheel. 

X

“I thought you said you lived in DC,” William says, craning his neck to see out the front window as nausea threatens to overtake him. The car snakes along the winding roads to the house. Scully drives. 

“Near DC,” she reiterates. Although maybe she’d been unclear. She can’t remember. She hasn’t showered in 36 hours and she’s needed the bathroom for the last two. “And I do live in DC, near George Washington University. Mulder lives out here.”

“Oh.” William actually chuckles, she thinks. “I kind of thought--”

“Deer!” Mulder shouts. 

Scully hits the brake pedal and her arm springs out, unbidden, to shield her passengers from coming forward. A doe stumbles forward into the twin beams, somehow able to walk on spindly legs. She is young, Scully thinks, maybe no more than a year old. Oddly, she does not look afraid. 

X

She hated the water pressure when she lived here, but now she welcomes the gentle trickle from the showerhead in the master bath. She stands with her back to it, her hair twisted into a wet knot on the back of her head. The small bottle of shampoo and body wash she’d left had been used up in recent months, so she’s showered with Mulder’s. The fresh woodiness of him surrounds her so entirely that she doesn’t notice he’s joined her in the shower until he speaks.

“Stop stealing all the hot water,” he whispers, and her eyes open slowly. 

“Get a bigger water heater.” 

“You were always the long shower-taker,” he says. 

She remembers standing under the insubstantial spray after double shifts at the hospital, meticulously scrubbing under her fingernails, knowing that when she finished he still wouldn’t be done in his office. _Five more minutes,_ he said three times, and then she’d turn out the light. 

She leans her head back and lets her wet hair fall and untwist. “Did he settle in okay?”

“Yeah, I washed the sheets in the guest room last week so he should be fine.” She quirks an eyebrow at this news and he amends, “Okay, Keegan washed them.”

She nods and lets her eyes close again. It almost feels like this is the beginning and the end of everything, that this is what they have been running towards and from. The three of them, in this house, like so many of her dreams and nightmares, seems a little too Norman Rockwell. She is waiting for the other shoe to drop. Scully opens her eyes and Mulder is still there, his hair starting to get poofy from the humidity. 

“I love you,” he says, “and we’re going to get through this.”

She sighs and lets him take her in his arms. “For how long? How long are we going to have to lie to him, Fox?”

“I don’t know,” he sighs, his chin resting on top of her head, “but I hope it’s not much longer.”

She kisses him, her mouth wet and his dry. The wall of the shower is cold against her back, making her tense up again, so she pats his shoulder twice and he hoists her up, holding steadily to her thighs, her ass.

Sometimes she wishes she’d only ever known him this way, some alternate version of their lives where they’d met in a bar or at a mutual friend’s birthday party or at the bank. The world stills when he is inside of her, slows to this delightful half-speed where she can hear shapes and taste colors and smell sounds. 

His hand moves to cup her face and she frets, “Don’t drop me!” but she knows he won’t. 

X

Freshly toweled, Scully runs her fingers through her hair one more time as she walks down the hallway back toward the kitchen. Caroline and Keegan speak in hushed tones and fall silent when she enters the room. The archeolinguist busies herself flipping through a book on ancient South and Central American dialects and Keegan is suddenly engrossed in his iPad.

“The fun’s over, Mom and Dad are home,” Scully jokes. 

Thankful for a segue, Caroline jumps right in. “Still waiting on word from another informant. The person I spoke to at MUFON said they couldn’t verify Elaine had been out in Kansas. But they’re useless over there sometimes, so Keegan is trying to hack into their database to make sure.”

Scully grimaces, stretching out her deltoids. “You’re hacking MUFON? They’re on our side, remember?”

“It’s not _hacking,_ ” Keegan says with an exasperated look at both of them. “I’m obtaining information we have every right to through alternate channels.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s what Snowden said,” Scully sighs. “Where’s William?”

Keegan inclines his head. “Office. With Mulder.”

Scully pads down the hallway, struck for a moment by how alive the house feels. It’s a cool spring night but warmth pools low in her belly, making her roll up the sleeves of her thin sweater as she comes to rest in the doorway of Mulder’s office. William scans the titles on the bookshelf while Mulder rocks in his swivel chair, feigning disinterest. Scully finds a perch on the edge of the desk and successfully resists the need to finger through Mulder’s damp hair. 

Her son’s short crop of hair has already dried from his own shower, but it sticks up in the back, in the sort of way she’d always imagined it would. “How come you only have the first three Harry Potters?” he asks. 

“Keegan’s lending them to me.” Mulder drops his voice to a stage whisper. “I don’t plan to give them back.”

“You should,” Will says haughtily. “Prisoner of Azkaban is the best one.”

“What? You’re not a fan of the Triwizard Tournament?” Mulder scoffs. Off William’s astonished look, he admits sheepishly, “I watched the movies first.”

“Cheater,” Will taunts. He squints at something on the shelf and reaches for it. 

A knock at the doorframe makes Scully turn her head. Caroline’s face is dark, like the morning this had all started. Behind her, Keegan is pale, though it might just be the bluish glow from his tablet, she’s not sure.

Scully goes to the door, stomach turning. “What’s wrong?”

“Elaine was never in Kansas yesterday,” Caroline whispers. “Whoever Mulder talked to--it wasn’t her.”

“They purposefully wanted you to pass the Omaha safehouse and come here instead,” Keegan says. “So whoever they are--”

“They know we’re here,” Scully finishes. “They know William is here.”

“What is this?” William asks behind her. 

Scully turns as he pulls down a folder from a tall shelf, a bulging manila envelope tied in the back with string. Her heart drops into her stomach. She opens her mouth to speak but finds her throat is suddenly very dry. 

“What is this?” Will asks again.

He turns the folder around and reveals, scrawled in her own neat handwriting, _William, 5/20/2001._


	9. Chapter 9

“This is my birthday,” William says, looking down at the envelope again. “This is me.”

“Will…” Mulder starts. “You need to understand something.”

Their son looks up at them, a maddening combination of them both. “Are you going to take me?”

Scully’s stomach drops. “Are we--”

“Are you going to-- kidnap me, or something?”

“No,” Mulder says immediately. 

“Absolutely not,” Scully affirms. “But--it’s a little difficult to explain.” 

“What’s in here?” William asks, flipping it over. He fiddles with the string. 

“Will, I know you have a lot of questions right now, but I don’t think it’s safe for us here,” Scully says firmly. She turns to Mulder. “The woman you spoke to was not Elaine. We need to go, now.”

“The woman at the gas station?” Will asks.

“She knew the code,” Mulder insists. “She--did everything right.”

“I’m sure she did, but right now, we’re all in danger.”

“I’ll check the status of the safehouse near here,” Mulder offers, swiveling in his chair and pulling up a page on his computer. 

“Come with me,” Scully says to Keegan and Caroline, leading them out to the kitchen. “We’ll need to take the emergency kits, all of them. And throw together some stuff for William.”

“How much time do we have?” Caroline asks. 

“If they know we’re here, it could only be a matter of hours, minutes even.”

“What else?” Keegan asks. 

She bites at her thumbnail. “Do either of you know what’s in that folder in Mulder’s office? The one labeled ‘William’?”

Caroline shakes her head slowly. “He never mentioned it. I mean, we knew you two had a son but he didn’t talk about it much.”

“He wasn’t searching secretly, or… something?” She hears the words come out of her mouth and is disgusted by how mistrusting she sounds. But she remembers all the nights of “ten more minutes” and “I’ll be right up” and hours and hours of him turning into a ghost before his computer screen. 

“We all have access to each other’s search history,” Keegan explains. “If there was something he was searching for, we’d be able to see it.”

“Unless he made some of his searches private,” Caroline says, rubbing a thumb across her bottom lip.

“How easy would something like that be?” Scully asks, her stomach turning.

“I wrote the program,” Keegan says. “No offense, but your old man hired me for a reason. Computers aren’t exactly his strong suit. His Instagram, however, is on fleek.” 

There is a loud thud and all the lights swell, before they are plunged into darkness. No one speaks for a moment. Scully feels her stomach drop. Then, Mulder’s disembodied voice floats in from the other room. 

“Is the backup generator turned on?” 

“I’ll go check,” Caroline offers.

“We don’t know what’s out there,” Scully warns.

The archeolinguist shrugs. “We’re not going to find out sitting in here.” 

Scully hears her feeling around in the dark for the cabinet under the sink. She emerges with a Maglite. Scully has the overwhelming urge to say be careful but refrains. 

“Be right back,” Caroline says, and the back door closes behind her. 

Will and Mulder emerge from the office, the flashlights in their hands illuminating them dimly. “Bloody Mary,” Mulder jokes. 

“If the generator was turned on wouldn’t it have kicked on automatically?” Scully asks.

“It’s been temperamental lately,” Keegan explains.

“Found a family of raccoons in there last summer,” Mulder says. “Hasn’t really been reliable since, I think they chewed the wiring.”

Scully makes a face, opening and closing cabinets in the dark, looking for an extra flashlight. She finds a tiny LED one in the junk drawer. 

“My dad found a squirrel family living under the hood of one of his tractors once,” Will pipes up. “But he only noticed them because of the smell.”

The screen to the back door slams open against the wall of the house and Caroline hurries in, breathing heavily. She closes the door behind her and locks the handle and the deadbolt. Four flashlight beams catch her on the welcome mat, her normally browned skin pallid and sweaty. 

“Something’s out there,” she whispers. The beam of her Maglite shakes on the floor. 

Scully takes a hold of her elbow, steadying her arm. “What did you see?”

“I heard…”

“Where?” Mulder asks, pulling out his phone.

“Already on it,” Keegan says, waving a hand. He’s pulled up a program on his tablet that appears to give him access to all the security camera feeds. 

“Whoa…” William says quietly, looking up at Mulder with admiration. 

“Dammit,” Keegan mutters, staring at eight black screens. “These weren’t supposed to power off. They have a battery backup.”

“This one, there.” Scully points to the rectangle in the top right corner. “I saw something move.” She stares harder. “They’re all still working, but--”

“The night vision function isn’t working on the battery backup,” Keegan finishes. “Goddammit.” 

“So we’re blind out there,” Mulder sighs.

“Caroline, did you catch a glimpse of something, anything?” Scully asks. 

The woman is breathing more slowly now, carefully swirling her hair into a knot at the base of her skull and securing it. “Only for a second. It was huge. Inhumanly huge.”

“Looks like you might be right after all these years, Mulder,” Keegan jibes. “Sasquatch lives.”

“It moved like a person,” Caroline insists. “And it was waiting for me when I got out there. It knew to stay hidden long enough to make me feel safe and then it reached for me.” She squints at the camera feeds, trying to make out something in the darkness. “What moves like a man but is almost twice its size?”

Scully meets Mulder’s gaze across the kitchen island. “A shapeshifter,” she says quietly. 

“Keegan, what other systems do we have on battery backup?” Mulder asks, ducking into his office. He reemerges with two Glocks and a tranquilizer gun. 

Keegan jumps. “Dude, what? Have you had those in there this whole time?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Mulder instructs. “Where are we with power?”

Keegan tries in vain to avert his eyes from the handgun as he scrolls through the app. “Door and window alarms. That’s about it. We really should get that generator looked at, we’re basically useless without it.” 

“This is my fault,” William says suddenly, and four pairs of eyes train on him. “He’s here for me, we should just give him what he wants.”

“We’re not doing that,” Scully says firmly. “This is not your fault.”

“I don’t want any of you getting hurt trying to protect me.”

“Well we’re just gonna have to take that chance,” Scully says. She takes William’s hand in hers and squeezes it. 

Mulder hands one of the guns to Caroline, who reluctantly takes it. He holds the tranquilizer out to Scully. She shakes her head. “You’re a better shot than I am,” he insists. “And we know we can’t fire anyway.”

Scully wets her lips, nods. “Yeah, okay.”

“Keegan, keep an eye on the cameras,” Mulder instructs. “See if you can adjust the balance and get us better picture.”

“We’re not going outside, are we?” Caroline asks.

“No, if we stay in here we have the upper hand,” Scully says. “This is our territory.”

She doesn’t miss the smile Mulder tries to hide. He clears his throat and asks, “It was just the one guy?”

Caroline shrugs. “That I saw. Could be more.”

“He’s only ever visited me by himself,” Will says. “But he talks like there are more of them. _Come with us,_ that kind of stuff.”

“They worked alone in the old days, they’re too noticeable if they travel in groups,” Scully agrees. 

“Right,” Mulder says. “I’ll take the front two rooms. Scully, the living room. Watch the south window, it--”

“It’s loose, I know. Will stays with--”

“With you,” Mulder says at the same time. 

Scully shakes her head. “If I’ve got the tranquilizer I’m going to be the one who takes the shapeshifter down, Will shouldn’t--”

“It’s me he wants, you should… use me,” William says, looking between them. 

Mulder meets her eyes with an expression that says, _he’s right, you know._ She pushes down the fear she feels rising in her gut and nods. “Will, you’re with me. Caroline, you’re in the kitchen.” Caroline nods. “Don’t fire your weapon unless you have to,” Scully continues. “And if you do, run.”

“Stay inside unless absolutely necessary,” Mulder instructs. “If you have to go outside, run towards the road, not the woods.”

“There, east corner of the house!” Keegan shouts, pointing to his screen. “Something just moved.”

“Let’s go,” Scully says, inclining her head down the hallway. She leads, the tiny blue LED of her flashlight guiding them. William follows behind, and Mulder brings up the rear. Before he splits off to the living room, he reaches for her in the dark and grabs the hem of her shirt. She jumps, and he apologizes with a wince and a finger to his lips. 

She and William enter into the small sitting room at the front of the house, adorned with knick knacks they’d bought when they moved in so they didn’t look like they’d been traveling for a year and a half. Some of the photos in frames are still stock photos. An unused navy armchair faces the window; she and William duck behind it now, peering out from either side.

“Why are we avoiding shooting?” Will whispers. 

“Their blood is toxic,” Scully answers. “It’s not like human blood. It… oozes, it’s green. Made out of some chemical compound we haven’t been able to identify.”

“If they’re shapeshifters,” Will says, “they can transform into anyone they want, basically.”

“Basically.”

“Like the lady at the gas station.”

“That’s probably what happened there, yes.” Scully nods. 

“So how do you know anyone is who they say they are? How do we know he’s not another alien shapeshifted to be a shapeshifter? How do I know you’re really Agent Scully and Agent Mulder is really Agent Mulder?”

She smiles ruefully. “Nobody wants to be us, Will.”

It’s silent for a moment, and then he asks the question she suspects he’s been leading up to. 

“How come you had that folder on me?” His eyes find hers. She can’t look away. It feels like staring at herself in the mirror, and then seeing her reflection move. 

“I think you know that you’re special, William. That you’re different.” She wets her lips. “For a long time, it was mine and Agent Mulder’s job to make sure that people who were different were safe.”

“Have you been watching me?” William asks. “Am I part of some special ‘I-get-visited-by-aliens’ research group?”

She wets her lips. “No. You’re not.” 

Will looks at the tranquilizer gun in her hand. “Have you ever used one of those before?”

“I haven’t in a long time.”

“Are you scared to?”

“To fire this? No.” She wonders if she should have lied.

“I’m scared,” William says, pulling his arms around his legs and resting his chin on his knees. His voice is so small that for a moment, Scully forgets he’s taller than she is. His empty crib flashes before her eyes; somehow it had seemed smaller without him in it. She’d taken it apart quietly, with minimal tears, but she couldn’t bring herself to take it out of the room for weeks after. It sat propped against the wall, casting prison cell shadows on the pile of stuffed animals in the corner. 

In the living room, Scully clasps his hand so tightly he winces a little; she is determined not to be the architect of his fear, crouched here in this home that might have been theirs together, a family. “It’s gonna be okay, William. This will be over soon.” 

After a moment, he squeezes back. “You and Agent Mulder are really nice.”

Her heart thuds in her chest. “We want to keep you safe,” she says. 

“That’s what my mom and dad always say,” William says. “Be safe, be safe. Get home safely.”

Scully smiles sadly. “It’s important to--parents. Most of them would do anything to keep their children safe.”

Will looks at the floor. “Agent Scully, can I ask--”

There is a crash from the living room and they both jump to their feet. 

“Stay behind me,” Scully instructs. 

They inch down the hallway where she is able to peek into the living room and see Mulder taking swings at a figure in the dark. She mouths stay here to William and he shakes his head. Her eyes adjust to the darkness and she sees Mulder hit the shapeshifter in the face once, twice. _Don’t draw blood,_ her mind screams, but she knows he’s thinking it too. His next move, after narrowly missing a gut punch, is a kick to the shins and then the knees. The shapeshifter goes down, but takes Mulder with him, grabbing him around the waist and pulling him onto the floor.

“Hey!” she shouts, before she can stop herself. 

“Scully!” he groans, struggling to escape. “Take the shot!”

The stun gun is heavy in her hands but steady. Her finger coils around the trigger, waiting for Mulder to move just slightly to the left so she doesn’t hit him. With a yell, he wrenches away and manages to climb to his knees, but the shapeshifter takes a hold of his ankle. Scully fires one shot that hits the much larger man in the shoulder. She never pulls the trigger on the second but it leaves her gun just the same, hitting the shapeshifter in the neck. Finally, he falls limp. He jerks Mulder’s leg backwards and Mulder tumbles back down to the floor, hitting his head on the end table on the way down. 

Scully rushes to his side, Will close behind. “You okay?” she whispers, elevating his head in her lap. 

The shapeshifter lies on the hardwood, his distinctive face unmoving. Scully estimates they have fifteen minutes, twenty, tops until he comes around. They can knock him out again but she only has four more tranquilizers and that’s not nearly enough time to figure out what to do with him. 

“Did you do that?” Scully asks Will. “The second shot, I never fired.”

“I had to. It was gonna hurt him.” 

Scully chokes back something, she can’t tell whether it’s a laugh or a sob.

“Is he gonna be okay?” William asks. 

“I’m a little, uh, dizzy,” Mulder grunts. “Must’ve hit my head pretty…” He trails off, his eyes slipping shut.

“What’s wrong?” Will asks, his voice rising. 

“It’s okay,” Scully soothes. “He’ll probably just be unconscious for a minute or two.” She smoothes Mulder’s hair away from his forehead and checks for pupillary response with her flashlight. Feeling eyes on her, she looks up at William. He’s eyeing her peculiarly, like maybe he’s looking in the mirror and now she’s the reflection. He picks at something that’s not there on the carpet. 

“You’re her, aren’t you?” he asks. “My mom.”

Scully’s ears ring and she squeezes her eyes shut for just an instant. One drunken night right after she moved out of the house, she thought she would get William back. She’d spread maps out across her living room floor, still too new for furniture. She would find him, drive all night without stopping like the lady who’d tried to kill that astronaut. It seemed like a flawless plan, until she’d awoken the next morning, head pounding with a hangover, all alone in a new place in an empty bed. 

She’s always wondered what she would say if she found him, if he asked. The explanations that sound like excuses. The justifications that she herself cannot justify. The admittance of defeat, of failure. Her son sitting before her and the wicked voice in her mind screaming louder, louder, until it feels like her head might split in two. 

“I thought I made you up,” William says, and she breathes again. “I told my parents--I mean, my, you know--I told them I remembered my mom and they said it probably wasn’t possible.”

She smiles ruefully. “I’ve learned that impossibility doesn’t exist.”

“It’s you though, right?” he asks hopefully. “That’s why Agent Mulder has that folder of me, you’re my parents. You’re my mom.”

Scully nods, and then her resolve crumbles and she looks down at her lap, unable to speak. She’s free. For the first time in fourteen years, her mind is quiet. No nagging guilt, no wicked voice. Tears escape the corners of her eyes and she covers her face with her hands. 

William falters. “I didn’t mean to--I’m sorry--”

She pulls him into a fierce hug and cradles the back of his head with her hand. “It’s me,” she whispers, finally. “It’s you.”


	10. Chapter 10

In the kitchen, Caroline holds a flashlight steady over the island. Scully cleans the cut on Mulder’s forehead. A thin laceration just above his right eyebrow, no stitches necessary, but she’s taking her time. She likes the feel of him beneath her hands, alive and breathing. She dabs the wound with peroxide and Mulder flinches in pain, hands clenching in his lap.

William sits at the dining table, chewing some granola bar he’d found in the cabinet. His eyes are glazed over and he stares at nothing on the wall. As exhausted as Scully feels, she knows it’s nothing compared to what her son must be feeling. The pain, the fear, the anger he’s felt all within the last forty-eight hours are more than one person should ever have to bear. She takes an angry swipe at the cut on Mulder’s forehead and he hisses. 

“Hold still,” she says firmly.

“It’s just a scratch,” Mulder grumbles. 

“What are we gonna do about Lurch?” Keegan asks.

The shapeshifter sits propped up, secured to a kitchen chair with zip ties. Scully has already given him another tranquilizer, but they need a more sustainable solution in place. 

“How did we handle these guys in the old days?” Mulder asks, his voice low.

“I think in the old days, we were just lucky enough if we got away.” 

“You mean you’ve never captured one before?” Caroline asks. She’s still a little shaken, her grip on the flashlight unsteady. 

“They’re not exactly easy to neutralize,” Scully says. 

“What if we give him to O’Malley?” Caroline says suddenly, her voice a whisper. 

“Absolutely not,” Scully quips. 

“He wanted a story, let’s give him a story.”

Keegan looks up from his tablet and says in a stage whisper, “What are you guys whispering about?”

“Tad O’Malley would take this and blow it all out of proportion,” Scully argues. “Conspiracy, fear-mongering, it’s all too easy for him to spin this into some mass coverup.”

“He wouldn’t have to try very hard,” Mulder says. “This gives Tad the true conspiracy he wants without bringing William into any of it.”

“So we’re just gonna hand this thing over?” Keegan asks Mulder. “This is your story, man, it’s something you’ve been pursuing for decades. Don’t give this to O’Malley.”

Mulder shakes his head. “It’s just as much Scully’s story as it is mine.” 

She loves him for that, but he’s not entirely correct. “It’s William’s story,” she amends. “We should let him decide.”

Caroline furrows her brow. “Are you sure that’s a good--”

“So many things just happen to you when you’re a kid,” Mulder agrees. “We should let him choose the outcome of this.”

“And scar the kid for life?” Caroline argues. “How’s that gonna--”

“Guys,” William pipes up suddenly from the table, “Guys, he’s gone.”

They turn to face the now empty chair where moments ago, the shapeshifter sat. The ties are unbroken. Scully feels the blood pounding in her ears, hears Keegan say rather hopelessly, “But we had him.” 

“He must have changed forms,” Mulder says, crossing the kitchen to inspect the intact zip ties. “Disappeared into the night.”

Scully approaches William at the table, aware that she’s walking like she’s about to corner a feral cat. She straightens herself up and asks quietly, “Will, did you see anything?”

His eyes are still round and fearful, but she believes him when he says, “I just blinked and he was gone.”

“Where could he go?” Keegan asks.

“Maybe,” Will says, “he just wanted to go home.”

“Should we check the perimeter?” Caroline asks. “Make sure he’s not still around.”

Scully nods, pulls her Glock from her waistband. “Follow me.”

Outside, the air is moist. Scully feels the little hairs around her ears curl almost instantly. Behind her, Caroline says, “You told him.” It’s not a question. 

Scully swallows. “I did.” 

“What did he say?”

Scully tucks her hair behind her ears. “Um, he said that he knew.”

Caroline chuckles. “He really is a little carbon copy of the both of you.”

“Look at this.” Scully halts suddenly, putting an arm out so Caroline doesn’t come any further. On the ground, a puddle of green ooze four inches across, no more than six. “He’s hurt.”

“Which means he isn’t far,” Caroline concludes. 

The archaeolinguist falls into step behind Scully as they follow a path of irregularly-shaped puddles around the back of the house. It is a cloudy night; normally the backyard is illuminated in clear moonlight this time of year. Sometimes, lying on a blanket in the summer, she and Mulder could see clearly to the edge of the treeline nearly a quarter mile away. _The woods are lovely, dark and deep,_ Mulder would whisper into her ear. _What are you, in the tenth grade? she’d chuckled._

“Scully, look,” Caroline grips her elbow and points to the treeline. “There.” 

Scully follows her pointer finger to the treetops, where a whitish light glows dimly, hovering above the cluster of pines that denote the edge of their property. _It’s the moon,_ she thinks distantly, but the light grows brighter and bigger and the clouds don’t part. A thin beam of light shines down, parallel to the sturdy trunks of the trees. Scully takes one step toward it, then breaks into a full run. 

She runs toward the trees, taking in big gulps of air, her boots kicking chunks of grass high around her as she goes. She hears a hiss and feels the sting on her foot and knows she must have stepped in a puddle of the shapeshifter’s blood, but she trains her eyes on the light, on the shaft coming down from the sky. Behind her, Caroline calls her name, but she keeps going, till the trees fill her line of vision and she can’t see their tops anymore. 

She only stops when she sees him, standing at the edge of the forest. His trousers are dirty and he favors his left leg, still at least a foot taller than her with an uneven stance. 

“I won’t let you take him,” she pants. Her lungs scream for air. 

“War is coming,” the shapeshifter says, “and we are only trying to protect him.”

“You don’t need to do that anymore,” Scully pleads. She does not feel afraid. “He belongs here.” She wants to say _he belongs to Earth_ but it sounds so ridiculous she can’t bring herself to do it. 

“It will happen soon,” the shapeshifter says, “and when it does, he’ll want to be with us. You’ll want him to be with us.”

“I made that mistake once,” she insists. “And I won’t make it again.”

Something almost like pain crosses the man’s neanderthal-like features and he says, “Next time it will be the boy’s choice.”

There is a flash of blinding light, and when Scully opens her eyes she is alone at the edge of the forest.

One Week Later

She hears everything acutely, like she’s just come up from underwater: the rhythmic thud of suitcase wheels on tile, the ding of airport announcements, the crinkle of his boarding pass in his hand.

“You sure you got everything from your room?” Mulder asks. 

“Yeah,” Will says, looking around anxiously. 

“What's wrong?”

“I've never been in an airport this big before.”

Scully smiles. “Well now when you come back through in October you'll know what it looks like.”

Their son grins. “I still can't believe they said yes.” 

Neither can she; Hannah and Rick had been furious when they revealed their true identity as William’s biological parents. Phrases like _manipulative exploitation_ and _unforgivable violation of trust_ still echo in Scully’s mind. William, bless him, had been quick to point out that without their intervention, he could have been taken and none of them would have ever seen him again; that had they revealed their true identities, it could have put all of them in even more danger. 

“This is not a threat,” Scully had explained over a secure line in Mulder’s office, while Will bit his nails anxiously in the corner, “but this might not be the last time William has to deal with something like this. These--people who are looking for him, they’re not finished. And I think it’s ignorant of us to return to business as usual.”

After a few more conversations, teary on both ends, the Van de Kamps had agreed on visits to DC two or three times a year, depending on William’s school schedule, and to stay in contact about any further threats to his safety. Skinner had come through again and gotten William placed on a protective list, ensuring that when he traveled, help wouldn’t be far.

“So… what do I call you guys?” William had asked from the backseat on the ride to the airport this morning. 

Mulder had faltered, but Scully heard herself say, “Whatever you want. You don’t have to decide now.”

Now, in the bustle of the airport, she wonders what his voice sounds like when he says Mommy. He’s too old now, she supposes, for such things. 

“I made sure you got an aisle seat,” Mulder says now, pointing to Will’s boarding pass. “I know it can be tough when you’ve got long legs.”

“I’m the third-tallest boy in my grade, after Matt Simonsen and Aiden White,” he boasts. “But everyone says Aiden got held back a year and is supposed to be in tenth grade anyway. So basically I’m the second-tallest.”

Scully watches him speak, tries to remember the quirking corners of his mouth, the swoop of his hair across his forehead, the way his Mulder-shaped hands grip the strap of his duffle bag. She decides she wants to live in this moment forever, the three of them huddled in the echoing airport atrium, still for once while everything around them rushes past. Scully takes a mental picture, ingrains in her being the feeling of her son as he hugs her goodbye, but says _I’ll see you soon._

She remembers the feeling as he walks away, his sneakers squeaking on the floor as he turns the corner to the security checkpoint. She remembers it as Mulder applies a faint amount of pressure to her wrist, his polite way of telling her let’s go after William is out of sight for several minutes. She remembers it on the long ride home and again that night as they slip into bed, their sheets still cool with the springtime chill. She remembers her son the next morning and the one after that and all the mornings to come; she remembers that he is part of her life and she remembers to forgive herself a little each day. She forgets where she put the key to her one-bedroom apartment in the city. She remembers what it feels like to come home to a warm stove and a kitchen bathed in yellow light. She remembers what it feels like to be in love, how it hurts very much at first, then a little, then not at all.


End file.
